




, ^ 



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Pilgrim Church. 



y 

THE PATH 



THE PILGRIM CHURCH, 



FROM ITS ORIGIN IN ENGLAND TO ITS ESTABLISH- 
MENT IN NEW ENGLAND. 



k 



AN HISTORICAL SKETCH. 



WEITTEX FOE THE MASSACHUSETTS SABBATH SCHOOL SOCIETr, AND 
APPROVED BY THE COMMITTEE OF PUBLICATION. 




BOSTON: 

MASSACHUSETTS SABBATH SCHOOL SOCIETY, 

Dkpositouy, No. 13 Corntiill. 



y ^f 7 _ ^ 



fl^-^ 



^t.<\ 



Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year ISfi'j, 

BY THE MASSACHUSETTS SABBATH SCHOOL SOCIETY, 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of Massachusetts. 

Electrotjped and Printed loy Wright & Potter, No. i Spring Lane. 



X Z, J( 




PREFACE 



It has seemed to the writer desirable that young 
persons should have a more distinct and coherent 
knowledge than is common, of the causes, influ- 
ences, circumstances, trials, and providences con- 
nected with the emigration of our forefathers to 
their home in New England. It has accordingly 
been his aim to enable his readers to look in upon 
those transactions and see them as they were. It 
would have been easy to expand the narrative; 
but he has aimed at brevity. Some of the topics 
would have required a fuller statement, had the 
volume been written for a different class of read- 
ers. Some portions of the book may even now 
seem too circumstantial — for example, the account 
given of the principles of the Puritans. But the 
statement was thought to be as brief as it could 
consistently be made. 



4 PREFACE. 

The writer is well aware that he eould have 
made, in some ivspeets, a moiv spirited niu-rative, 
bv easting mueh of his material into other forms 
of statement. But he thought it better on the 
whole to let the aetor^. in great measure, tell 
their o\yii tale, and to seeure perfeet truthfulness 
n\ther th:ui graphic effect. The narrative is a 
history, and not a fancy. sketch. Even the want- 
ing links of the story have not been supplied, 
except in cases perfectly obvious. The facts have 
been gathered with cai-e from vimous sources, 
such as Bradford's History of Plymouth Planta- 
tion, Youngs Chivnicles, XeaVs History of the 
Puritans, Hunter's Foundei*s of New Plymouth, 
Bartlett's PhTuouth and the Pilgrims, Motley's 
Dutch Republic, and vaiious othei- vohimes. 





CONTENTS. 




CHAPTER. 


. 


PAGE. 


L- 


— ScROOBY Manor, 


7 


II.- 


-Hampton Court, 


. 27 


III.- 


-Star Chamber and High Cc 


)M- 




MISSION, .... 


. 52 


IV.- 


-Boston and Hull, . 


. 66 


V.- 


—Holland, .... 


. 78 


VI.- 


— Leyden, .... 


. 107 


VII.- 


—London, .... 


. 131 


VIII.- 


—Delft Haven, . 


. 148 


IX.- 


—The Ocean, . . 


. 163 


X.- 


—The Land, .... 


. 183 


XI.- 


—Home, 


. 201 


XII.- 


—Fast and Thanksgiving, . 


. 225 


XIII.- 


—Rest at Last, . 


. 241 



X 



PATH OF THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 



CHAPTER I. 



SCROOBY MANOR 



Not more than a mile from the boundary 
line between the counties of York and 
Nottingham, in England, and six miles west 
of Lincolnshire, lies the little village of 
Scrooby. Though situated on a branch of 
the Northern Railway, it is quite too small a 
village to be found upon an ordinary map. 
It lies in the midst of a level and fertile 
district. The fields around, neatly divided 
by green hedges, are laden in summer with 
heavy crops of grain, or dotted here and 
there with grazing cattle. Through the 
plain slowly and glassily winds the little 



8 THE riLGRKM C li U R C H . 

Stream well termed the Idle, lingering in 
many a curve on its way to join the Trent. 
To the nortli a little way beyond the Idle 
lies the village of Austerfield, hidden among 
the trees from the sight of the railway trav- 
eler ; while the site of Scrooby, close upon 
its southern bank, is marked at once to the 
eye by the village church pouitmg with its 
graceful spire to the sky. 

One spot about the village of Scrooby— 
and one alone — possesses special interest. 
Even tliat has very little for the eye to see. 
Passing the modest cottages and alone: the 
rich grassy plain that skirts the river, 
through a wicket gate you enter a laro-e 
enclosure covered with tlie finest turf, 
bounded on one side by the river and on 
another by the railroad. A trench or moat, 
now dry, but which within the memory of 
living men was filled with water, divides the 
enclosure from the gardens of the village ; 
and near the centre of tlie area stands a 



S C R O B Y M A N O U . 9 

noble group of sycamores. Nothing remains 
to tell oi' the wealth and luxury that once 
reveled on this spot, except a few fragments 
of richly carved wood-work which, a few 
years since, and perhaps now, might be seen 
sustaining the roof of a neighboring cow- 
house. 

That dry moat, and that carved wood 
work carry us back to a time when for 
several generations the archbishops of York 
used to ride forth from this spot witli their 
splendid retinues to the chase, and return at 
night to the festive board. For that for- 
saken spot was once occupied by Scrooby 
Manor Hoiise, the favorite hunting-seat of 
the Primates of England. The group of 
sycamores, no doubt, stands near the site 
of the principal building. An odd-looking 
y)ile it must have been — an " inner court- 
building " encompassed by a spacious outer 
court four times as large, all built of timber, 
except the front of the house — the latter 



10 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 

being of brick, with a flight of stone steps 
leading to the door. The whole was sur- 
rounded by a moat. 

Royalty once at least had mounted that 
stone stairway. In 1541 Henry the Eighth, 
on his northward journey, had passed a 
night at Scrooby Manor. But his presence 
can hardly have added to the pleasure of the 
palace ; for it was towards the close of his 
life, a few months before the lustful tyrant, 
who had divorced two wives and beheaded 
one, executed yet another. They must have 
breathed more freely in the manor as he 
passed on his way. 

But the time came when the old manor 
house was to be thronged with a very differ- 
ent company. The last archbishop that 
resided here was the learned but hasty and 
passionate Sandys, a vigorous hater of the 
Puritans. When the old man died in 1588, 
the estate was bequeathed to his son, Sir 
Samuel Sandys, thenceforth to be more and 



SCROOBY MANOR. 11 

more neglected, till the park became a farm 
and the house fell to decay. But before 
decay had begun its work, and while the 
archbishop's son still owned it, though he 
did not occupy, the ancient halls began to 
echo with unwonted sounds. On each Sab- 
bath morning, as early at least as the year 
1606, a watchful observer might have seen a 
considerable number of men and women, 
quietly and even stealthily gathering from 
the villages around, and entering the old 
manor house. A grave but cheerful man, 
some forty years of age, with a deliberate 
utterance and the air of one who had 
mingled with men, welcomed his brethren 
in the Lord. It was William Brewster — a 
man whom God had specially guided, and 
trained, and brought to this spot for the 
work in which he was now engaged, of gath- 
ering up the Puritan spirit of the neighbor- 
ing country — of making ^croohy Manor Ike 
cradle of the Pilgrim Church, and thence- 



12 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 

forth of daring and enduring foremost in all 
the checkered fortunes of the church, and 
aiding its business affairs with his practical 
wisdom and firmness, till the little church 
was landed and firmly planted in its western 
home. 

William Brewster — " Elder Brewster," as 
he afterwards became — seems to have been 
all along the central person of the enter- 
prise, the man to whose influence, judgment 
and firmness the church was most indebted 
in all its earlier outward history. He was 
of what is called a good family — had been 
well educated, and even spent a little time 
at Cambridge University, where he became 
a religious man. Thence he had entered 
the service of Sir William Davison, Secre- 
tary of State to Queen Elizabeth — a man 
of rare qualities and true piety. He had 
been Davison's confidential servant and 
friend, had accompanied him on his embassy 
to the Netherlands — had slept with the Keys 



SCROOBY MANOR. 13 

of Flushing under his pillow — ^liad ridden 
through England wearing his master's gold 
chahi of honor, on their return — and when 
the false queen had executed her own 
cousin, Mary of Scotland, and thrown the 
blame upon her Secretary, Brewster still 
followed him in his fall till his good offices 
could be of no further use. The next we 
hear of him he has retired to the cou^^try 
and rented the old manor at Scrooby. For 
thirteen years, at least, he held the office of 
postmaster, or post, as the term then was, at 
Scrooby. It was a busy office. His work 
was not alone to receive and deliver letters 
and transmit them over the great northern 
mail route, but to send them by special 
despatches into the region round, not pro- 
vided then, as now, with cross-routes, to 
keep relays of horses for travelers hy post, 
and to furnish such travelers the rest and 
refreshment they might require. It was a 
sort of compound of the business of post- 



14 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 

master, expressman and innkeeper. His 
business will explain his occupancy of so 
large a mansion. But while his head and 
hands are full of work, his heart is full of 
Christian zeal. Besides his own godly life 
and example, he is active in "procuring 
good preachers to all places thereabouts, 
and drawing on of others to assist and help 
to forward in such a work ; he himself being 
commonly deepest in the charge, and some- 
times above his ability." 

But the time has arrived when he and his 
friends can no longer worship m the parish 
churches. Their conscientious piety is 
" scoffed and scorned," the godly ministers 
that fed the flame of their faith are driven 
out of the churches and forbidden to preach, 
and the people themselves are hunted and 
harrassed by the civil authorities, as will 
presently appear, till they will soon be fairly 
driven to make a firm and final stand. 
They met informally to pray and praise, till 



SCROOBY MANOR. 15 

at length, about the time when we have 
introduced Brewster to the reader — not 
earlier than 1602, and probably as late as 
1606 — they have joined themselves into a 
church of Christ, and agree to walk in all 
his ways " whatsoever it should cost them.'' 
It was a costly experiment to them. And 
Brewster is the central spirit in the move- 
ment, and is to be the one fertile and 
resolute character around whom the whole 
enterprise hinges. 

So here they are, strangely enough, in the 
old episcopal mansion. And while in the 
neighboring church a surpliced priest is 
chanting prayers to the swell of the organ, 
or reciting a sermon tliat he never com- 
posed, or reading the daily lessons from the 
apocrypha, or, clad in a cope, is administer- 
ing the wafer-bread to kneeling men profane 
in speech and godless in life, and while the 
people are bowing at every mention of the 
name of Jesus, soon to retire from church 



16 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 

and keep the remainder of the Lord's own 
day at the ale-house or the dancing-green — 
the little group at the manor house are 
praying without a book, and smgmg without 
an organ, and listening to the fervid words 
of one who speaks from his own deep relig- 
ious experience to theirs, and then they will 
withdraw to their homes, to spend the rest 
of the sacred time with their families and 
train the little ones to count the day of the 
Lord honorable and a delight. 

There are two preachers in that congrega- 
tion to-day. One of them is " a grave and 
fatherly old man, having a great white 
beard." His name is Richard Clifton. Two 
or three miles away is the village church of 
Babworth and the pleasant parish where for 
many years he pungently preached the 
gospel and faithfully catechized the little 
ones, and led many souls to Christ. He has 
given up his pleasant home for his Master's 
sake — ^but he will die before this little flock 



SCROOBY MANOR. 17 

find their new home beyond the Atlantic. 
His awakening ministry had penetrated into 
the neighboring villages before he left his 
Rectory, and one young man at least had 
habitually walked from Austerfield to 
Babworth to be enlightened in the gospel. 
But the younger preacher of that Scrooby 
congregation is the man of mark. He is 
just thirty-one years old, and his name is 
destined to be memorable and venerable in 
the future church of God — it is John 
Robinson. The little company do not know 
him yet as they soon will know him ; for the 
company are mostly of Mr. Clifton's former 
congregation, and Robinson has just come 
among them. Of his personal appearance 
no record or hint remains. They soon 
found him to be " very courteous, affable 
and sociable in his conversation " — " a man 
learned and of solid judgment, and of a 
quick, sharp wit, of a tender conscience, and 
very sincere in all his ways— a hater of 

2* 



18 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 

hypocrisy and dissimulation," and one who 
*^ would be very plain with his best friends." 
"He was an acute and expert disputant, 
very quick and ready ; " a truth-loving 
man, " never satisfied till he had searched a 
cause to the bottom," and " ever desirous 
of any light." He soon became and always 
remained " much beloved " by his people, 
" and as loving was he unto them ; " while 
he was also " much esteemed and reverenced 
of all that knew him." He is a graduate 
of Cambridge, has been rector of an Epis- 
copal church, and abandoned it for con- 
science' sake. He is a man of more liberal 
and elevated views, perhaps, than any of his 
brethren, and soon to become in the spirit- 
ual affairs of the church what Brewster was 
in the temporal — " a man," say they in later 
times, " not easily to be paralleled." 

One other person present demands espe- 
cial attention, although but seventeen years 
of age. It is William Bradford, the future 



SCROOBY MANOR. 19 

historian of the little church and Governor 
of Plymouth Colony. Fourteen years ago 
his father died and left him to the guardian- 
ship of his uncles. He belongs to one of the 
most respectable families among the yeo- 
manry of Austerfield. The little parish 
church still stands, in our day, seven or 
eight hundred years old, where in his child- 
hood he attended service on the Sabbath. 
But at length the rumor of Clifton's awak- 
ening preaching reaches Austerfield and 
draws young Bradford thither. The way to 
Babworth, six or seven miles, lay through 
the village of Scrooby ; and Brewster doubt- 
less must often have been his companion on 
the latter portion of the road, and com- 
muned with him of heavenly things, as they 
went and came together. Amid the dis- 
pleasure of friends and scoffs of the profane, 
he joins the little church, casts in his for- 
tunes with it, and, young as he is, becomes 
one of its most efficient arms from this time 



20 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 

forth. His early instructions must have 
been limited ; but he has a thirst for knowl- 
edge, and will go on until he speaks the 
Dutch and the French languages, and has 
learned the Latin and the Greek ; nor will 
he rest till he can read the Hebrew too, 
because he " will see with his own eyes the 
oracles of God in their native beauty." 
Resolute, prompt, self-denying, sagacious, 
modest and conciliatory — the time is coming 
when for six-and-thirty years, with but five 
years' rest, procured by his own earnest 
entreaty, he shall be Governor of the Colony 
at Plymouth. 

The other faces are indistinct. Here very 
likely are Mr. Clifton's sons Zachary and 
Timothy, and in all probability Elder Brew- 
ster's children, at least the older ones, 
Patience, Fear, Love, and Wrestling. Here 
also, most likely, are Richard Jackson and 
Robert Rochester, though they are not to 
find their way to America. Here, perhaps, 



SCROOBY MANOR. 21 

is Alice Carpenter, afterwards Mrs. South- 
worth, and her father. And could we look 
in upon them, no doubt we should see 
others who followed the fortunes of the little 
church to its haven of rest. But we have 
no certain knowledge who else at this time 
were here. 

But why are they here at all ? There are 
religious services to-day in the village 
church, scarcely a stone's throw away — the 
place where their fathers worshiped, the 
place where the villagers still assembled to 
listen to the liturgy and hear the hymns of 
praise chanted to the organ ; yea, the very 
priest that reads those prayers they them- 
selves are taxed to pay. ^ Why then are they 
not there ? Why does the old manor house 
echo their homelier strains of sacred song, 
and their louder words of petition and of 
exhortation ? And why, too, if they pre- 
ferred to worship thus, did they not con- 
tinue quietly to assemble in this secluded 



22 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 

spot, and not incur the trouble, the expense, 
and the trials of a journey to a distant 
land ? 

For those who live in a country and an 
age in which churches of every name are 
scattered peacefully around by each other's 
side, and every man, unmolested, attends on 
any or none of them all, according to his 
choice, it is hard to realize that those simple- 
hearted men who only met to worship God 
in their own chosen way, were offending 
against the highest authority of the realm, 
because they worshiped God hi the old 
manor house rather than the village church, 
or that their preachers were incurring the 
punishment of felons because they thus dis- 
pensed the pure gospel of Christ without the 
prayer-book and the priestly robes and the 
village church. Yet so it was. And it 
required no little Christian hardihood, even 
for those who sympathized in their views, to 
take the decided stand. There was now but 



SCROOBY MANOR. 23 

one other church like this in that portion of 
tlie kingdom — at Gainsborough, some ten 
miles distant. 

Indeed it is not certain that there was a 
third like theirs now holding religious ser- 
vices in any portion of the kingdom. There 
had been a noble band that were accustomed 
to meet for prayer and reading of the Word 
of God in South wark, a borough of London 
on the south side of the Thames, seeking 
privacy in the darkness of tlie night or the 
seclusion of some grove. They too had 
organized a church as early as 1592, at the 
house of Francis Johnson. But hardly had 
they done so, before tlie storm of persecu- 
tion had burst upon them. Some fifty-nine 
of them lay at one time in various London 
prisons, besides ten of their number who 
had died in prison, sinking under the inten- 
tionally aggravated hardships and privations 
of their prison life. Henry Barrowe, John 
Greenwood and John Penry had been car- 



24 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 

ried from those prisons to the gallows. 
Many of them had fled to Holland, till, 
between imprisonment and exile, the Soiith- 
wark church had been suspended. 

One link, at least, connected this perse- 
cuted band with the Scrooby church. The 
Rev. John Smyth, who had been a compan- 
ion and fellow-sufferer of the Southwark 
brethren, was one of the ministers at Gains- 
borough; and from this latter flock the 
Scrooby church seems to have been an 
offshoot. 

The tempest indeed had lulled after the 
murder of Greenwood, Barrow and Penry. 
No doubt there was hope of better times, 
when a change of monarchs should come 
and the sceptre should pass from the hands 
of stern Elizabeth. For it was during the 
year 1602 — the last moody and broken- 
hearted year of the queen's life, not very far 
from the time when, though dying, she 
declared with characteristic energy that " no 



SCROOBY MANOR. 25 

rascal's son but a king's," namely, "our 
cousin of Scotland " should succeed her,— 
that the Gainsborough church had been 
formed. Tlie better times they looked for 
did not come. After a time— perhaps 
before the time at which this narrative com- 
mences — Smyth and many of the church at 
Gainsborough had left for Amsterdam. 

The Scrooby church, in its secluded spot, 
remained the longest. Some favor may 
have been procured for them by the owner 
of the mansion— for another member of the 
family. Sir Edwin Sandys, ten years later, 
proved a valuable friend at court. But they 
were not immolested. The malice of their 
adversaries first obliged them to change 
about their place of assembly, and "they 
kept their meetings every Sabbath in one 
place or another, exercising the worship of 
God among themselves," till they saw " they 
could no longer continue in that condition." 
Many of them " had their houses beset and 



26 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 

watched night and day/' and some " were 
taken and clapped up in prisons," until they 
too, " seeing there was no hope of their 
continuance there, by joint consent resolved 
to go into Holland." 

But who was the man and what the influ- 
ence that made their situation so intoler- 
able ? It was all summed up in one 
memorable sentence of the man who was 
" no rascal's son, but a king's," when he 
rose from his chair at Hampton Court and 
declared, " I will make them conform, or I 
will harry them out of the land, or else 
worse." 

To the explanation afforded by that mem- 
orable scene we will look in the next chap- 
ter, — in which we must carry the reader 
back to a period three years previous. 



HAMPTON COURT. 27 



CHAPTER II. 

HAMPTON COURT. 

On the north bank of the Thames, twelve 
miles nearly west of London, stands the 
palace of Hampton Conrt. It was once the 
favorite resort of the monarchs of England. 
It is now an odd architectural jumble, where 
the noble Tudor-Gothic of the original edi- 
fice, as built by Cardinal Wolsey, stands side 
by side with Grecian pillars and porticos, 
added by Sir Christopher Wren. It is now 
noted chiefly for its fine gardens and park, 
and for its gallery of a thousand pictures — 
many of them indeed of very little value, 
though containing a series of portraits of tlie 
successive Courts from Henry Eighth to 
George the Second, and above all, the seven 



28 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 

celebrated cartoons of Raphael, which are 
among the chief wonders of ancient and 
modern art. 

You could not have seen all tliese things 
there, of course, two hundred and fifty years 
ago. But if you had been there on Satur- 
day, the 14th day of January, 1604, you 
would liave beheld a very singular scene. 
In the drawing-room of the privy-chamber 
of this palace, there were gatliered a sliowy 
group of men, the chief ecclesiastical and 
civil dignitaries of England. First and fore- 
most were the three men who, eleven years 
before, had urged on the slaughter of Green- 
wood and Barrowe — namely, Jolm Whitgift, 
Archbishop of Canterbury and Primate of 
all England, Richard Bancroft, the Bishop 
of London, his chief adviser and bitter suc- 
cessor, and Bilshi, Bishop of Winchester. 
With them were the bishops of Worcester, 
St. David's, Chichester, Carlisle, and Peter- 
borough, one archdeacon and seven deans ; 



HAMPTON COURT. 29 

and around them stood the whole privy 
council of the king, and a numerous crowd 
of courtiers — spectators of the coming scene. 
A little forward of the canopy of state stood 
a vacant chair. As this brilliant group, all 
clad in their official costumes, had been 
summoned from the outer chamber to tlie 
drawing-room, they left behind them, in the 
ante-chamber, sitting on a form like a set of 
school-boys, four men, robed in fur gowns 
like the professors in foreign universities. 
All that day they were kept without. They 
bore the nickname, " Puritans." 

When all was ready in the drawing-room, 
the king entered and seated himself, with 
his hat on, in the vacant chair — James the 
First of England, thirty-seven years of age, 
whom Mr. Dickens has described as " ugly, 
awkward and shuffling both in mind and 
person. His tongue was much too large for 
his mouth, his legs were much too weak for 
his body, and his dull, goggle-eyes stared and 

3* 



30 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 

rolled like an idiot's. He was cunning, 
covetous, wasteful, idle, drunken, greedy, 
dirty, cowardly, and the most conceited man 
on earth. His figure — ^what is commonly 
called ricketty from his birth — presented the 
most ridiculous appearance that can be 
imagined, dressed in thick padded clothes, 
as a safeguard against being stabbed, (of 
which he lived in continual fear,) of a grass- 
green color from head to foot, with a hunt- 
ing-horn dangling at his side instead of a 
sword, and his hat and feather sticking over 
one eye, or hanging on the top of liis head 
as he happened to toss it on. He used to 
loll on the necks of his favorite courtiers, 
and slobber their faces, and kiss and pinch 
their cheeks; and the greatest favorite he 
ever had used to sign himself in letters to 
his royal master his majesty's ' dog and 
slave,' and used to address his majesty as 
' his Sowship.' He was one of the most 
impertinent talkers ever heard, (in the 



HAMPTON COURT. 31 

broadest Scotch,) and boasted that he was 
unanswerable m argument." The picture 
is hardly overdrawn. The king was very 
disgusting in manners, and very conceited 
and despotic in character. He had consid- 
erable learning and no wisdom. He was 
here to display his conceit, his pedantry, his 
folly, and his despotism. 

James had just ascended the throne of 
England nine months before. On his way 
to London, he was met by a petition called 
the " Millenary Petition,'* because signed l3y 
near a thousand ministers of the church of 
England, in which they humbly prayed for 
the " reformation of certain ceremonies and 
abuses of the church." James, in reply, 
had published a proclamation, appointing a 
conference, in which he would hear the 
parties desiring and those opposing the 
change. He himself had nominaled (he 
disputants on both sides. The time had now 



32 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 

come ; and here is the famous Conference 
of Hampton Court. 

The king sits down in his chair. The 
church dignitaries in their canonicals stand 
before him. The courtiers and privy coun- 
cillors look on. The four " Puritans " sit 
on their form in the ante-chamber. The 
king opens with a speech, in which he 
thanks God — and here he puts off his hat — 
that he is now come into the promised land ; 
that he sits among grave and reverend men ; 
that he is not a king as formerly [in Scot- 
land] without state, nor in a place where 
beardless boys would brave him to his face. 
He assures them that he intends no essential 
changes in the church, though he is willing 
to remove any scandalous disorders ; and if 
the complaints are frivolous, he " desires to 
cast a sop into Cerberus' mouth that lie may 
never bark again." He then proceeds him- 
self to make a few objections to certain 
things m the liturgy and practice of the 



HAMPTON COURT. 33 

established church. The bishops fall upon 
their knees and entreat the king not to con- 
sent to any alterations, lest it should be 
regarded as affixing a stigma on their past 
treatment of the Puritans. Three slight 
changes in the phraseology of the prayer- 
book are agreed upon. And so ends the 
first day's conference — which was merely a 
private arrangement between the king and 
one party as to the best mode of silencing 
the other. 

Monday comes. The mock conference 
goes on. The four men in fur gowns are 
now called in — to be interrupted, sneered 
at, brow-beaten, threatened, and silenced. 
The ecclesiastics are there to break in upon 
them continually and vexatiously. The 
nobles and privy councillors are present to 
join occasionally in the " king's mirth and 
raillery " about the Puritans. The monarch 
himself is there to play the part of witness, 
advocate, and judge, and at times to add the 



34 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 

authority of the sovereign. The four men 
are very able men, but they are abashed and 
intimidated as they stand in that presence, 
Hke culprits before a tribunal. Dr. Rain- 
olds, professor at Oxford, is esteemed the 
most learned man in England ; Dr. Sparke, 
another Oxford professor, and Mr. Chadder- 
ton, master of Emanuel College, Cambridge, 
are two very eminent scholars ; and Mr. 
Knewstubbs, fellow of Cambridge Univer- 
sity, a man of less prominence. They do 
not, however, fully represent the principles 
of the " thousand " ministers, nor are they 
in all respects agreed among themselves. 
But it makes little difference m the result. 

These learned men did not succeed, even 
had they been fully prepared, in laying the 
whole case before the king. We will there- 
fore gather up from various public state- 
ments made just about that time, within a 
year or two, the principal things they 
demanded, and lay them before the reader. 



HAMPTON COURT. 35 

The main thing that covered the whole 
ground was this. "All that we crave of his 
majesty and the state is, that, with his and 
their permission, it may be lawful for us 
to luorsliip God according to his revealed 
will; and that we may not be forced to the 
observance of any human rites and cere- 
monies.''^ Here is the whole thing hi a 
nutshell — permission to worship God in 
their own way — according to the Scriptures, 
and without any human inventions. Thoy 
do not ask to force any body else to their 
mode — they even say about this time that 
they are willing to pay their tithes or taxes 
for the support of the established churches. 
They only ask to be let alone. 

Now, as we said, the " Puritans " did not 
all agree in every thing ; nor did they all 
carry out the principle that they started 
with. But those that went farthest — to 
whom belong Robinson and Brewster and 
others, take the following ground. 



36 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 

They hold, then, that none but the Word 
of God can teach them what to believe and 
what ceremonies to use in worship ; that it 
is very wrong for men to compel others to 
worship in any particular way ; and also that 
it is wrong to use the ceremonies that men 
have invented, if they have been used in 
idolatry and superstition. 

As a consequence of this freedom from 
compulsion, they hold one set of worshipers 
(or church) is equal in authority to any 
other church — and is not under its power, 
nor has any power over it. It must simply 
govern itself. 

Every little church therefore must choose 
and have its own pastor and church officers. 
And there are no other church officers than 
those of particular churches — no bishops, 
archbishops, and the like. 

Every pastor ought to be able to interpret 
the Word of God and to preach publicly ; 
and all ignorant and mere reading priests 



HAMPTON COURT. 37 

ought to be rejected. He ought to be able 
himself to lead the congregation in prayer ; 
and no forms or ceremonies, except those 
appointed in the Bible, ought to be laid 
upon him. 

When a pastor is chosen, or an unworthy 
member is to be disciplined, it ought to be 
done with the free consent of the whole 
church. 

When an unworthy member is finally 
excommunicated from the church, that is 
the end of the church's dealings with him, 
for " we exclude from ourselves all secular 
pomp or power, holding it a sin to punish 
men in their bodies, goods, liberties or lives, 
for any merely spiritual offence." * 

These principles in their full extent were 
held only by the smaller portion of the 
thousand ministers — the Independent or 
Congregational portion as they afterwards 
became, and to whom the Scrooby church 

* Neal I., 250. 



38 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 

belonged. Nor did they always consistently 
carry out their principles. The greater part, 
most likely, and at that time possibly Robin- 
son himself, would have been satisfied with 
less radical changes, and remained in the 
Church of England. 

The four Puritans at Hampton Court 
confined themselves to requests for certain 
improvements on the established church. 
They were not suffered to say all that they 
wanted to say. The things which they said 
and would have said, by way of objection to 
the church in which they were compelled to 
worship, were these : 

They would have objected to the whole 
discipline of the Church of England, as 
unscriptural. All sorts of characters, the 
most wicked and abandoned, were admitted 
indiscriminately to the communion ; and if a 
man were ever excommunicated, it was not 
done for any thmg immoral, but because he 
would not comply with the ceremonies. 



HAMPTON COURT. 39 

When excommunicated, it was done by a set 
of worldly men, not by the churcli or its 
spiritual officers ; and the excommunication 
was only another name for fines, impjris- 
oiiments, and confiscation of goods. Xo 
attempt was made to hallow the Sabbath, 
but trading and all sorts of amusements 
were freely allowed, and indeed soon after 
this by royal proclamation were openly 
encouraged. 

They objected to the government of the 
church. They believed that all pastors were 
" bishops," and equal in authority. They 
claimed that to put the whole government of 
the church into the hands of a few men 
called archbishops, bishops, and so forth, 
and to give them power over their brethren 
and over the churches, was wholly contrary 
to the Bible. They held that the enormous 
incomes of these men who were not pastors, 
were wrong, while the poor pastors "vverc 
many of them almost staryed. They held 



40 THE PILGRIM 'CHURCH. 

that their worldly engagements and their 
pomp and parade were iinscriptural — the 
very archbishop Whitgift then present hav- 
ing on one occasion entered Canterbury 
with a retinue of five hundred horsemen, 
one hundred of whom were his own serv- 
ants. These officers were appointed, not by 
the churches, but by the king. 

They objected to the way in which the 
churches were provided with ministers ; that 
a certain man, perhaps a layman, would 
receive the income of a church, or of several 
churches, and hire some other person (a 
curate) to do his work ; and these men so 
employed were, in a vast number of cases, 
too ignorant to prepare a sermon. The 
people had no voice in the selection of a 
pastor. They held that every minister 
should be qualified to preach ; and moreover 
that he was the proper person to administer 
" confirmation," rather than the bishop, a 
stranger. They thought that me ministers 



HAMPTON COURT. 41 

should have permission to hold occasional 
meetings with each other for mutual 
improvement, called " prophesyings.'' 

In regard to the church service, there 
were many things, more or less important, 
to which they took exception. It seemed 
wrong to be compelled always to use in 
public worship certain set forms of prayer, 
without permission in any case to express 
their petitions in their own words. Certain 
passages in the offices of baptism and burial, 
implying that the infant was regenerated in 
baptism, and that the deceased person had 
surely gone to heaven, they regarded as 
improper in doctrine. They held that the 
church "lessons," omitting, as they then did, 
nearly one-fourth of the Old Testament and 
substituting three-fifths of the Apocrypha, 
put dishonor on the inspired Word of God, 
and taught some grave errors. They re- 
garded the observance of saints' days and 
church holidays as unauthorized and super- 

4* 



42 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 

stitious. The frequeut repetition of the 
Lord's prayer and the constant responses 
did not please them, as savoring too much 
of vahi repetitions ; and especially they 
disproved of the " intoning " or singing of 
the prayers. 

They had strong objections to certain 
requh'ed rites and ceremonies — some of 
them as behig improper of themselves, 
others as having been connected with gross 
superstitions and tending to foster them. 
When a child was baptized it seemed to 
them utterly wrong that certain other 
parties than the parents should stand as 
godfathers and godmothers, and make those 
promises for the children which belonged 
only to the parents to make and to keep ; 
also that a child should be entitled to the 
communion just as soon as it could repeat 
the Lord's prayer and the catecliism, ivithout 
anj) other qualification. The sign of the 
cross in baptism, which was no necessary 



HAMPTON COURT. 43 

part of the rite, and which had been so 
abused that many deemed the rite invaUd 
without it, they disliked. Also the act of 
kneeling to receive the sacrament, as being 
a relic of the Romish superstition, which 
supposed the bread to be changed into the 
body of the Son of God and adored it 
accordingly — " a breaden God." They ob- 
jected to being required to bow at the name 
of Jesus, as founded on a false interpretation 
of Scripture. They strongly disliked the 
surplice and other priestly vestments, be- 
cause they had been consecrated to idola- 
trous and superstitious uses, and were the 
very badges and marks of the false religion 
which they themselves had renounced ; the 
use of them gave a kind of countenance to 
popery, and was a great oifence to weak 
minds. On similar grounds they were not 
well pleased with some other things that 
have now lost all unfavorable associations, as 



44 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 

the ring in marriage, and organs and other 
musical instruments in church services. 

In regard to these ceremonies, they 
objected above all to making them, as they 
were made, absolutely compulsory; and to 
ejecting a man from the ministry and for- 
bidding him to preach at all, unless he sub- 
scribed to all the articles and ways of the 
church, and practiced all these ceremonies. 
This was the odious and tyrannical thing. 

Such were the main things the Puritans 
asked. Some of them were of less impor- 
tance and of temporary significance ; others 
were of the deepest consequence. Some of 
them have since been weeded out of the 
English established Church, others modified 
— while some of the most serious difficulties 
still remain there. 

The truth was, the Church of England 
was then but half reformed from the Romish 
Church. The English prayer-book was the 
Romish missal cleared of prayers to the 



HAMPTON COURT. 45 

Yirgin Mary, invocations of the saints, the 
more modern rites of the Romish Church, 
and some other excrescences; but a good 
many taints of its origin hung about it, and 
still hang about it to the present day. And 
at the time when James held this famous 
Conference, the condition of the Church was 
still unsettled. In fact when Henry Eighth 
broke off from the Church of Rome, the 
cause had been simply a question of power 
between him and the pope; who should 
govern in church matters in England ? 
Henry just stepped into the pope's place, 
became head of the English Church, and 
had every thing in his own way. Elizabeth 
had stood in much the same position, and 
was in many respects quite as much a Cath- 
olic as a Protestant in her notions and feel- 
ings, to the day of her death. And now 
James was anxious to wield the same heavy 
rod of arbitrary power. Great hopes had 
been entertained of him by the Puritans, 



46 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 

before he came to the throne. He had 
talked very differently while king of Scot- 
land. He had praised the Scotch (Presby- 
terian) Church as the " sincerest kirk in the 
world," signed the " Confession of Faith," 
declared the service of the Church of Eng- 
land to be " an evil-said mass in English," 
and once interposed with Elizabeth in behalf 
of the Puritans in England. But in the 
words of Mr. Hallam, "James was all his life 
rather a bold liar than a good dissembler." 

So he turns at Hampton Court to the 
lords and bishops with the words, " I will 
tell you I have lived among this sort of men 
ever since I was ten years old, but I may 
say of myself, as Christ said of himself, 
' Though I have lived among them, yet, 
since I had ability to judge, I never was of 
them.' " Accordingly, the conference was 
all a sham. 

James calls on the four doctors for their 
objections. Dr. Rainolds begins his reply. 



HAMPTON COURT. 47 

Before he gets far, Bishop Bancroft, " in a 
heat," on his knees begs the king " to stop 
the doctor's mouth, because schismatics are 
not to be heard against their bishops." 
Rainolds in the ensuing discussion disclaims 
being a schismatic; "which occasioned a 
great deal of mirth and raillery between the 
king and his nobles." After a very long 
interruption, Eainolds is allowed to proceed. 
The king interposes as he thinks fit. When 
Eainolds complains of the circulation of 
Komish pamphlets by warrant of the Court, 
James tells him, "Doctor, you are a better 
collegeman than statesman." Rainolds asks 
for preaching ministers, which brings Ban- 
croft on his knees again with the petition 
that all the churches might have " praying 
ministers," and that all the ministers might 
be compelled to read the church homilies 
instead of sermons, because " pulpit ha- 
rangues are dangerous." The lord-chancel- 
lor throws in a remark ; the bishop replies 



48 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 

with a joke ; and the king ends the debate 
on the point, by promising to " consult the 
bishops." 

When Dr. Eainolds urged his objections 
to the apocryphal books, the bishops knew 
not what to say ; but the Solomon of the 
age, as James loved to be called, came to 
their relief with a torrent of useless learn- 
ing, closing with the question as he turned 
to his lords, "What, trow ye, make these 
men so angry with Ecclesiasticus ? By my 
soul, I think he was a bishop, or they would 
never use him so." The doctor spoke of 
the compulsory use of the ceremonies and 
the vestments. Here James interrupted 
him with a defence of them in part, and 
closed by saying, " I will have none of that ; 
I will have one doctrine, one discipline, one 
religion in substance and ceremony ; never 
speak more to that point, how far you are 
bound to obey." At length the doctor came 
to the question of the " prophesyings." The 



HAMPTON COURT. 49 

king could contain himself no longer, and 
instead of hearing the doctor's reasons, he 
told these intimidated men that he found 
they were aiming at a Scots Presbytery, 
"which," says he, "agrees with monarchy 
as well as God and the devil. Then Jack 
and Tom, Will and Dick shall meet, and at 
their pleasure censure both me and my 
council. Therefore pray stay one seven 
years before you demand that of me ; then 
if you find me pursy and fat and my wind- 
pipe stuffed, I will perhaps hearken to you. 
But till you find I grow lazy, pray let that 
alone." Then turning to the bishops he put 
his hand to his hat and said, " My lords, if 
once you are out and they in place, I know 
what would become of my supremacy, for, 
no bishop^ no king. Well, doctor, have you 
any thing else to offer?" "No more," 
replied the confounded doctor, " if it please 
your majesty." "Then," said the king, 
rising from his chair, " if this be all your 

5 



50 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 

party have to say, I will make them conform 
or else I will harry them out of this land, or 
else worse." And it will appear that he 
was better than his word; for he harried 
them in the land, and would not let them go 
out. 

Nothing remained but the ceremony, next 
day, of calling in the Puritans to give them 
their answer with the closing assurance, " I 
will have them enforced to conformity." 
Bancroft is in raptures, and again he goes 
down on his knees. "I protest my heart 
melteth for joy, that Almighty God, of his 
singular mercy, hath given us such a king 
as, since Christ's time, hath not been." And 
at one point the old archbishop Whitgift, 
though within six weeks of God's tribunal, 
is so in transports as to cry out, " Undoubt- 
edly your majesty speaks by the special 
grace of God." 

James chuckles over his exploits upon 
these frightened doctors. "I soundly pep- 



HAMPTON COURT. 51 

pered off the Puritans," he wrote to a 
Scotchman, in his exalted way. " They fled 
me so from argument to argument without 
ever answering me directly, that I was 
forced to tell them that if any of them when 
boys, had disputed thus in college, the 
moderator would have fetched them up, and 
applied the rod to their buttocks." 

And the bishops and courtiers called 
James the Solomon of the age. Now for 
the issue. 



62 THE PILGRIM CHURCH, 



CHAPTER III. 

STAR CHAMBER AND HIGH COMMISSION. ^ 

The four doctors in fur gowns have gone 
home. Fifteen hundred ministers learn the 
result with disappointment. Many of them 
are determined they will not submit to the 
"• base, beggarly ceremonies," notwithstand- 
ing " the lordly, tyrannous power of the 
prelates " that enforced them. A stroke of 
palsy, four weeks later, has silenced the 
flattering tongue of the old archbishop 
Whitgift forever ; and Bancroft is preparing 
to take his place. Before Whitgift's body is 
committed to the tomb, James proclaims to 
the nation that " his resolutions are unalter- 
ably settled," and informs parliament that 
the Puritans are " an insufferable sect." 



STAR CHAMBER ETC. 53 

And by way of emphasis, ten deputies sent 
to him with a petition for relief, who found 
liim hunting at the time, are clapped in jail. 
James and the bishops go to work in good 
earnest. The first thing is to get the appa- 
ratus of persecution in good working order. 
One would think that Elizabeth had left 
little to be desired. There were the Star 
Chamber and High Commission Courts, 
with tremendous powers — of which we have 
more to say presently. There was a fine of 
twenty pounds a month for staying away 
from church service — enough to bring poor 
men pretty surely to jail. There was a 
requisition, that the ministers all " sub- 
scribe " to the church articles and govern- 
ment under penalty of ejection. There was 
a prohibition of all preaching, catechising, 
and praying in any private family, where 
any beside the family were present. The 
High Commission Court claimed almost 
unlimited powers of search, arrest and trial 

5* 



54 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 

— and of punishment too, whether there 
were or not any penalties prescribed by the 
canon law. But all this was not enough. 

So at the same time with the parliament, 
the king called a Convocation or ecclesi- 
astical assembly, and gave them power to 
make new and sharper canons. Bancroft 
presided with a will. They very soon turned 
out a hundred and forty-one canons, that 
had a grip like a vise. These were immedi- 
ately ratified by the king's letters patent 
under the great seal. They ought to have 
been confirmed by act of parliament to 
make them bind the laity, as they did the 
clergy. But the king and the bishops did 
not concern themselves about that. Let us 
look at some of the crimes they punished, 
and see what chance they left for an honest 
Christian man. 

The canons declared that the following 
persons shall be excommunicated — ^let the 
reader mark the word, for it meant then 



STAR CHAMBER, ETC. 55 

not only that a man should be turned out 
of the congregation of the faithful, and be 
denied Christian burial when he died, but 
that he should be rendered incapable of 
suing' for his lawful debls, and be impris- 
oned by civil process for life, or until he 
make satisfaction to the Church — all persons 
shall be excommunicated who shall affirm 
either that " the Church of England [with 
James and Bancroft at its head] is not a 
true and apostolical church ; " or that " its 
form of worship is corrupt, superstitious or 
unlawfid, or contains any thing repugnant 
to Scripture ; " or that " its thirty-nine arti- 
cles are in any part superstitious or erro- 
neous, or such as he may not with a good 
conscience subscribe to," or that " the rites 
and ceremonies of the church are wicked, 
anti-christian, or such as good inen inay not 
with a good conscience approve, tise, or 
subscribe ; " or tha^t " its goyernnient by 
archbishops, bishops, des^ns and archdeacons, 



56 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 

and the rest that bear office in the same, is 
anti-christian or repugnant to the Word of 
God ; " or that " the form and manner of 
making and consecrating bishops, priests or 
deacons, contain any thing repugnant to the 
Word of God ; " — whosoever " shall separate 
from the communion of the Church of Eng- 
land and combine together in a new brother- 
hood ; " whosoever shall affirm that ministers 
separating from the Church of England may 
"take to themselves the name of another 
church not established by law, or shall pub- 
lish that their pretended church has groaned 
under the burden of certain grievances 
imposed upon them by the Church of Eng- 
land ; " " whosoever shall affirm that there 
are in this realm other meetings which may 
rightfully challenge to themselves the name 
of true and lawful churches ; " " whosoever 
shall affirm that it is lawful for any sort of 
ministers or lay persons to make rules, 
orders and constitutions in causes ecclesias- 



STAR CHAMBER, ETC. 57 

tical, without the king's authority, and shall 
submit to he governed by themy 

This is severe enough, certainly. But the 
Convocation went further ; and cut off the 
right of appeal in case of one condemned for 
these offences, unless he would first recant. 
They specially re-enjoined all the offensive 
forms and ceremonies ; and required that 
every preacher should subscribe to the 
king's supremacy, the prayer book, and the 
thirty-nme articles, and should declare in 
the same subscription that he did it from the 
heart. They closed their pleasant work by 
pronouncing "excommunication" on any 
man who denied the universal authority of 
these canons, or aspersed the authority, 
character and proceedings of the Convo- 
cation. 

Who could enforce these canons ? Many 
of the very men that made them. The two 
archbishops and the whole array of bishops, 
each held his ecclesiastical court — spread 



58 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 

thus all over the kingdom — and they could 
summon and sentence the culprits. 

But there was a more terrific body still, 
called into being by the late Elizabeth and 
working with fearful energy far into the 
reign of King James' son Charles — the High 
Commission Court. It was as absolute as 
tlie Inquisition, and its jurisdiction extended 
over the kingdom. It would summon an 
accused man, and after he had lain seven 
weeks in the clink prison, he was brought to 
trial. The Commissioners put him on oath 
to ansioer all questions that should be put to 
him, and then, contrary to the first princi- 
ples of British law, by a series of searching 
interrogations, obliged him to accuse him- 
self. If he answered, he was condemned 
and punished on his own testimony ; if he 
refused, he was imprisoned and punished 
for contempt of court. This court claimed, 
and within a dozen years had exercised, the 
power to deprive men of their estates, to 



STAR CHAMBER, ETC. 59 

imprison them for life, and even to inflict 
capital punishment. Its authority embraced 
offences against the "canons" or church 
laws. Its spirit was well exhibited about 
twelve years previously, when Rev. Francis 
Johnson was before the court. Johnson 
expressed his surprise that he should be 
treated in a way which could only make 
men hypocrites. " Come to the church and 
obey the queen's laws," was the Commis- 
sioner's short reply, " and be a dissembler, 
a hypocrite or a devil, if thou wilt." John- 
son was sent to perpetual banishment. 

This court was a terror to the Puritans. 
If a man wished to bring a minister into 
trouble, he had only to inform the commis- 
sioners by letter that he was a suspected 
person, and a " pursuivant," or messenger, 
was sent to his house with a summons. 
Here we light upon the bishops again ; of 
forty-four commissioners, twelve were 
bishops. 



60 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 

Back of this was another famous, or 
infamous, tribunal, called the Star Chamber 
Court — so named because the roof of the 
room in which it was held was decked with 
gilt stars. It was an unlawful, but a fearful 
tribunal; and its members were appointed 
and removed by the monarch himself. Here 
again our friends the bishops appear ; for 
the court was " made up of certain noble- 
men, bishops^ j^^dges and counsellors of the 
monarch's nomination, to the number of 
twenty or thirty." It possessed an unlimited 
discretionary power of fining, imprisoning, 
banishment, mutilation, and corporal pun- 
ishment ; its jurisdiction extended to all 
sorts of offences not coming under the cog- 
nizance of the ordinary courts ; and its pro- 
ceedings were of the most summary kind. 
This was the tribunal which in the next 
reign condemned the lawyer Prynne for 
writing a book against plays, to have both 
his ears cut off, to pay a fine of five thou- 



STAR CHAMBER, ETC. 61 

sand pounds, (near twenty-five thousand 
dollars,) and to suffer perpetual imprison- 
ment; and sentenced Dr. Leighton, for an 
intemperate book against the power of the 
bishops, to be degraded as a minister, to 
have his ears cut off, his nose slit, to be 
branded in the face with a red-hot iron, to 
stand in the pillory, to be whipped at a post, 
to pay a fiue of a thousand pounds, and to 
lie in prison till it should be paid — though 
the parliament afterwards released him at 
the end of ten years. 

To make thorough work, the king sum- 
moned this fearful court to the Star Cham- 
ber and put to them three questions, to all 
of which they gave him the answers he 
wanted. The third question was, "What 
punishment they deserved who framed peti- 
tions, and collected a multitude of hands 
thereto, to prefer to the king in a public 
cause, as the Puritans had done, with an 
intimation to the king that if he denied their 

6 

/ 



62 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 

suit, many thousands of his subjects would 
be discontented?" To which that body 
replied that this crime of petitioning " was 
an offence finable at discretion^ and very 
near to treason and felony in the pun- 
ishment." 

The king issued his proclamation in July, 
giving the Puritans till the end of November 
to conform. Then Bancroft springs to his 
work. In eleven months he has driven 
more than three hundred ministers from 
their places, many of them into prison, and 
many into foreign lands. Partial conces- 
sions were accepted for a time from a multi- 
tude of others, only lest the churches should 
be left destitute. 

A heavy hand is that of the bishops. Two 
Puritans, Mr. Mannsel and Mr. Lad, a min- 
ister and a merchant, one Lord's day after 
sermon, join with Mr. Lackley in repeatmg 
the heads of the sermon they had heard 
in church. Charged with having held a 



STAR CHAMBER, ETC. 63 

"conventicle," the two former are summoned 
by the High Commission Court. The oath 
(to answer all questions put to them) is 
tendered and refused. They are cast into 
prison without being admitted to bail. At 
length they prevail on Nicolas Fuller, an 
able lawyer, to be their counsel. He moved 
in court for their discharge on the ground 
that- the High Commissioners were not em- 
powered to commit any of his majesty's 
subjects to prison. It was an unpardonable 
offence. Bancroft moved that ho be made 
an example ; and Fuller was thrown in 
prison and kept there till the. day of his 
death. 

The ministers that fled from England 
with their followers, went to various parts 
of Holland and formed churches, Presbyte- 
rian and Independent or Congregational. 
Many of them were there overwhelmed with 
poverty. The learned Ainsworth, " a great 
master of the Oriental languages,'' lived 



64 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 

upon ninepence a week and some boiled 
roots, hiring himself as porter to a printer, 
till his employer discovered his skill in the 
Hebrew language and made it known. Mr. 
Smyth and his congregation must have gone 
over about this time. 

About the same time, probably, John 
Robinson was driven from his church near 
Yarmouth, and soon found his way to 
Scrooby. But not long could he there find 
rest. The pursuivants were after him and 
his friends. Vain were their attempts to 
elude attention ; the eye of the commission- 
ers was on them. Then it was that they 
resolved to follow their friends to Holland. 
But it was no easy matter to escape from 
the country. The king was determined to 
crush them altogether ; and " although they 
could not stay, yet they were not suffered to 
go. The ports and havens were shut 
against them, so that they were fain to seek 
secret means of conveyance, and to fee the 



ETC. 6b 

mariners, and give extraordinary rates for 
their passages. And yet they were often- 
times betrayed, many of them, and both 
they and their goods intercepted and sur- 
prised." Two only of these memorable 
surprises are recorded. - They will be related 
in the chapter following. 

William Brewster and two other members 
of the Scrooby Church are summoned by 
the Commissioners of the Province of York 
to appear on the 22d of April, 1608, at the 
Collegiate Church of Southwell, some 
twenty miles from Scrooby. They did not 
choose to appear. The commissioners im- 
posed a fine of twenty pounds each upon the 
recusants, and in November made returns to 
the exchequer to have the fines collected. 

If that fine was collected, it was tlie last 
that Brewster paid. 
6^ 



66 THE PILGRIM CHURCH, 



CHAPTER lY. 

BOSTON AND HULL. 

Fifty miles south-east of Scrooby lies the 
old English seaport, Boston. It is quiet 
enough now, but there was a time when its 
business was second only to that of London. 
Its prosperity, however, had greatly declined 
in the days of the Pilgrims. It stands on 
the sluggish river Witham, five miles from 
the sea, in the midst of a low and marshy 
region. It possesses one splendid building, 
the finest parish church in all England, 
whose lofty tower, two hundred and sixty 
feet in height, is visible for leagues over the 
surrounding furs and far away at sea. Two 
hundred miles directly east across the 
German Ocean, lies the city of Amsterdam. 



BOSTON AND HULL. 67 

One day, in the latter part of the year 
1607, William Brewster, William Bradford, 
and a large company of men, women and 
children, with their worldly goods, might 
have been seen upon the way with their 
faces turned anxiously toward the town that 
was marked by that lofty tower, which they 
were now approaching. They were bound 
for Holland. It was a sore trial to them. 
They shrunk from leaving " their native 
country, their lands and livings, and all 
their friends and familiar acquaintance." 
That was not all. They were going to a 
country "where they must learn a new 
language, and get their livings they knew 
not how.'' They thought of Holland as an 
expensive place to live, involved at that very 
time in " the miseries of war." They were 
countrymen and worthy farmers, " not 
acquainted with trades or traffic," the chief 
occupations of Holland. Many of them, so 
they have told us, thought it " an adventure 



68 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 

almost desperate, a case intolerable, and a 
misery worse than death." The only reason 
why these things " did not dismay them " 
was that " their desires " (they say) " were 
set on the ways of God, and to enjoy his 
ordinances. TJiey rested on his Providence^ 
and knew whom they had believed.''^ 

So they " had hired a ship wholly to them- 
selves and made an agreement with the 
captain to be ready at a certain day, and 
take them and their goods at a convenient 
place, where they accordingly would all 
attend in readiness." They reach Boston — 
but the captain is not there. " After long 
waiting and large expenses, he came at 
length and took them in at night.'''' But 
better for them if he had not come at all. 
He is a false-hearted wretch, and has before- 
hand made secret arrangements with their 
persecutors. As soon as the company and 
their goods were all aboard, the officers 
rushed in. Equally harsh to their victims 



BOSTON AND HULL. 69 

and faithless to their employers, the officers 
seem first to have plundered them on their 
own account. They "put them into open 
boats and then rifled and ransacked them, 
searching them to their shirts for money ; " 
nor were "even the women" spared the 
indecent search. " Their money, books and 
much" of their other property having been 
thus taken away, they are carried back into 
town and " made a spectacle to the multi- 
tude who came flocking on all sides to 
behold them." Among that multitude 
undoubtedly there were some who in after 
years came from tliis very spot and founded 
another Boston in New England. Thomas 
Dudley or Richard Bellingham, future gov- 
ernors of Massachusetts, may have been 
there ; or perhaps even a little boy ten years 
of age, Samuel Whiting, who afterwards 
was the minister of Lynn. If it had been 
five years later, John Cotton might have 
been there — the man who afterwards was 



70 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 

preacher in that splendid church, and later 
yet the famous minister of the second Bos- 
ton ; but that brilliant ^nd eloquent scholar 
was residing still at Cambridge as one of the 
Fellows, and soon to be Head Lecturer, of 
Emanuel College. The exhibition, trying 
as it was, was not in vain. Here, and after- 
wards at Hull and Grimsby, "their cause 
became famous, and occasioned many to 
look into it." And their Christian deport- 
ment " was such as left a deep impression in 
the minds of many," and afterwards was the 
means of adding to their numbers. 

They are delivered to the magistrates of 
Boston, and kept under arrest till instruc- 
tions should come from the lords of the 
council. The magistrates were friendly and 
showed them all the favor they could — 
which is not strange when such a man as 
the father of Samuel Whiting somewhere 
about this time was mayor of the city. All 
of them were confined a month; after which, 



BOSTON AND HULL. 71 

with the exception of seven principal men, 
they were dismissed to their homes — if 
homes they could be said to have. Brewster 
and six others with him lay still longer in 
prison and were bound over to the court. 
Bradford was dismissed earlier on account 
of his youth. 

But though frustrated, they are not 
shaken in their purpose. The following 
spring they renew the attempt, but at 
another place. The little river Idle, that 
washes Scrooby manor, flows into the Trent, 
the Trent into the Humber, and the Hum- 
ber into the German Ocean. On the north 
bank of the Humber, twenty miles from its 
mouth, lies the brisk little seaport Hull, and 
close by the mouth of the river, the ancient 
but declining port of Grimsby. Distrusting 
the faith of their countrymen, they seek out 
a Dutch captain at Hull, state their case to 
him, gain satisfactory assurances, and make 
their appointment. To escape observation. 



72 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 

they fix upon a solitary place between 
Grimsby and Hull, where he should meet 
them, and take them on board. It was a 
point nearly north from Boston and north- 
east from Scrooby, about fifty miles distant 
from each place. The women and children, 
with the goods, were sent to the appointed 
spot m a small bark, and the men were to 
meet them by land. The ship is a day 
behind them. Meanwhile the sea is rough, 
and the women sick, and the seamen run 
the bark into the shelter of a neighboring 
creek. When the ship arrives next morn- 
ing, the captain sees the men on shore, and 
the bark with its contents left fast aground 
by the ebbing tide — where it must lie till 
noon. No time is to be lost. A boat is sent 
for the men on shore. One load of them 
are on board and the boat is about to return 
— but, alas ! it is too late. The country is 
roused ; a great company of horse and foot 
are in sight, and rapidly advancing. Tlie 



BOSTON AND HULL. 73 

Dutchman, with an oath, weighs anchor and 
sets sail. 

So here are a part of the men on their 
way to Holland — Bradford among them — 
with not a change of clothing, and many of 
them with hardly a penny in their pockets, 
their wives and children left to the tender 
mercies of their persecutors. They could 
not restrain their tears; they would have 
given all they had " to be again on shore ; " 
but there was no remedy. And soon it 
became a question whether those wives and 
children would ever see them more. A 
fearful storm fell on them and tossed them 
about for fourteen days, during which they 
were driven upon the coast of Norway and 
for a whole week saw neither sun, moon nor 
stars. The sailors " with cries and shrieks " 
gave up all hope ; the passengers " without 
any great distraction" gave themselves to 
fervent prayer, and " with a great height of 
divhie faith cried, 'Yet, Lord, thou canst 

7 



74 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 

save ; yet, Lord, thou canst save.' " Wlien 
they reached the port in safety, they felt it 
to be in answer to tlieir prayers. 

Of the men who were left behind, those 
who were needed to assist the women, 
remained ; the rest made their escape. But 
bitter was the distress of the company in the 
bark, and sad the sight they presented — 
children "hanging about" their mothers, 
" crying for fear, and quaking with cold, 
and the mothers themselves in deep dis- 
tress, weeping on every side for their hus- 
bands that were carried away," for "the 
poor little ones hanging about them," for 
their forlorn and miserable prospects, " not 
knowing what should become of them and 
their little ones," as they " had no homes to 
go to." The magistrates were sadly at a 
loss what to do with them. " To imprison 
so many women and innocent children for 
no other cause but that they would go with 
their husbands seemed unreasonable;" "and 



BOSTON AND HULL. 75 

to send them to their homes again was as 
difficult, for they had sold their houses and 
livings." So they " harried them round " 
from one place to another, and from one 
justice to another, till all were wearied and 
tired with them and glad to be rid of them 
on any terms. In the meantime " the poor 
souls endured misery enough." 

But the wise and cheerful Brewster and 
the calm and beloved Robinson remained 
with them in England through all their 
troubles. Retreat could not now be thought 
of; a necessity lay upon them to go, and it 
" forced a way for them " — for most likely 
the magistrates found it indispensable to let 
them go. "In the end, notwithstanding 
these storms of opposition, they all got over, 
some at one time and some at another, and 
met together agam, according to their 
desires, with no small rejoicing." Rejoic- 
ing, indeed! when those anxious husbands 
and fathers, those forlorn and weeping 



76 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 

wives, and those affrighted, homeless chil- 
dren rushed to each other's arms ! Robin- 
son and Brewster, who had " stayed to help 
the weakest over before them," came with 
the last company; and all are together 
again, but in a foreign land. 

These trials had been hard for them, but 
not without their uses for the Master's 
cause. Their faith, and constancy, and 
Christian deportment, and their purpose, 
too, had been thoroughly advertised in these 
three important places, Boston, Hull and 
Grimsby, and in the region round about. 
They made their mark. And it is noticeable 
how when in later days they found their 
way across the Atlantic no portion of the 
mother country was so abundantly repre- 
sented in the emigration that followed them, 
as the region round about the scene of their 
sufferings and notoriety. The name of 
Boston itself and of a score or two of towns 
lying within a radius of sixty or eighty miles 



BOSTON AND HULL. 77 

— Hull, Waltliam, Cambridge, Beverly, 
Hingham, Needham, Framingham, Asliby, 
Yarmouth, Brain tree, Lynn, Boxford, Sud- 
bury, Ipswich, Haverhill, Woburn, Leicester, 
Northampton, Hatfield, Wenham, and others 
— transferred to the earlier settlements of 
Massachusetts, bear witness to the origin of 
many of the early colonists themselves. 
Little but the pure gold, too, could pass 
through such a fire. 

Those despairing women and those 
anxious men saw not fully the reason for 
their trials. But God had a reason, 
nevertheless. 
7* 



78 THE PILGRIM CHURCH 



CHAPTER V 



HOLLAND. 



The Pilgrims are safe at last in Holland. 
Why are they here ? They came because 
here they could find perfect safety ; and God 
brought them here, apparently to teach 
them some lessons they could not have 
learned, had not their way to Plymouth led 
through Holland. Here was " a church 
without a bishop and a state without a 
king." Here was the only state in Europe 
or the world, where there was then perfect 
civil tolerance on religious subjects. God 
sent the pioneers of New England thither to 
make them more thoroughly tolerant and 
republican than any other band of emigrants 
that came to America. As they were to 



HOLLAND. 79 

shape the whole history of New England, 
they were made to undergo a severer train- 
ing, and a more thorough maturing, and to 
gain wiser and more liberal views by a 
broader experience. In after days they 
refrained from some of the practical errors 
of the later colonists. And though compar- 
atively few and poor, their early influence 
on the first settlement of New England was 
invaluable. How came the state of things 
they found in Holland ? 

It was the fruit of one of the most terrible 
histories of suffering that the annals of the 
world contain. The fierce and murky 
elements that kept the heavens of England 
in commotion for more than a hundred 
years, with successive storms of persecution, 
with lowering clouds and muttering thun- 
ders and flashing fires, had swept through 
Holland in one long and awful hurricane, 
and burned themselves out at last, to leave 
the sky all bright and pure. 



80 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 

Ill England, the movement of the Refor- 
mation had been slow. Three-quarters of a 
century had passed already since Henry 
YIIL, tlie great-great-uncle of James the 
First, had rudely torn England from the 
authority of the pope, because the pope 
refused to grant him a divorce from Catha- 
rme, his queen. But Henry, having broken 
away from Rome, suppressed the monas- 
teries and absorbed their wealth, afterwai'd 
endeavored to hold the English Reformation 
where it was. He withdrew the permission, 
once given, to read the Word of God, 
retained auricular confession, the seven 
sacraments, the cehbacy of the clergy, the 
doctrine of transubstantiation, prayers for 
the dead, invocation of the saints, and most 
of the peculiarities of popery, except the 
supreme authority of the pope. And so he 
held the kingdom in an ambiguous condi- 
tion, wherein he continued to burn as here- 
tics those Avho avowed the doctrines of 



HOLLAND. 81 

Luther, and to hang as traitors those who 
maiiitamed the supremacy of the pope. 
Indeed on one occasion, in 1540, three 
Protestant ministers and four Papists were 
sent on the same hurdle or cart to the same 
place of execution. In the brief reign of 
Henry's son, Edward YI., Protestantism was 
made the national religion, the prayer-book 
compiled from the Romish missals, and thus 
from tlie ancient liturgies, substantially, into 
its present form, and a higher pitch of liber- 
ality attained in one respect than ever since 
in the Episcopal Church, namely, in recog- 
nizing foreign chiu'ches without bishops, and 
foreign ministers not ordained by bishops, as 
true churches and ministers. But persecu- 
tion contmued to some extent towards those 
who went beyond a certain range ; Anabap- 
tists were burned. Then came bloody 
Queen Mary, another of Henry's children, to 
re-establish Romanism. In her reign of 
about five vears and a half, besides those 



82 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 

who were secretly murdered in prison, four 
hundred persons, including sixty women and 
forty little children, were burned alive for 
their religion. There is a place in London, 
called Smithfield, now used for a cattle 
market, rich with the blood of the martyrs. 
Those fires of Smithfield began with good 
John Rogers, the man who at the stake 
refused to recant for an offered pardon, 
though a wife and ten children bound him 
to the world. The reign of Elizabeth, 
though not so polluted with blood, was 
severe on non-conformity. By the act of 
uniformity, passed in the second year of her 
reign, any minister who should venture to 
address his Maker in other language than 
that of the Book of Common Prayer, was 
liable to the loss of goods and chattels for 
the first offence, to twelve months' imprison- 
ment for the second, and imprisonment 
during life for the third. It was she who 
established the High Commission Court. 



HOLLAND. »y 

The Anabaptists still were executed ; Bar- 
row, Greenwood and Penry suffered death, 
and the members of the Soiithwark Church 
lay in prison ; and others fled the country. 
Then came James, to be followed by the 
heavy hand of Charles with his notorious 
Archbishop Laud. Never for an hour was 
the principle of full toleration erected in 
England till the glorious government of 
Cromwell — then to be long again sub- 
merged. 

But in Holland the state of things had 
long been different. The terrific struggle 
for liberty of conscience had been carried 
through in the reigns of the famous Em- 
peror Charles the Fifth and his fanatical son 
Philip II., of Spain; and a quarter of a 
century before the death of Philip, William 
the Silent, Prince of Orange, had founded 
the Dutch Kepublic on principles of full 
toleration. 



84 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 

The train of events may be briefly 
sketched. The Reformation had swept into 
Holland almost immediately on the public 
appearance of Luther, — the provinces of 
Holland being tlie paternal inheritance of 
the Emperor Charles. It was the one deep 
regret of Charles' latest hours, that when 
Luther appeared before him at the cele- 
brated Diet of Worms, he had not violated 
his own royal word and sign-manual and 
put Luther to death ! But he showed his 
disposition. For in that very year, 1521, 
and from the very place of the Diet, the 
young emperor had issued an arbitrary edict 
for Holland, declaring that as " the aforesaid 
Martin [Luther] is not a man, but a devil 
under the form of a man, and clothed in the 
dress of a priest, the better to bring the 
human race to hell and damnation, therefore 
all his disciples are to be punished with 
death and confiscation of goods. ^^ Another 
edict soon forbade all private assemblies for 



HOLLAND. 85 

devotion; all reading of the Scriptures; all 
discussions ivithin one's oivn doors concern- 
ing faith, the sacraments, the papal author- 
ity, or other rehgioiis matters, under penalty 
of death. Then, in 1535, come still another 
edict condemmng all heretics, whether re- 
pentant or persevering, to death ; repentant 
males to be executed with the sword, 
repentant females to be buried alive ; the 
obstinate of both sexes to be burned. These 
horrible edicts were all re-enacted in a body 
by subsequent decrees, and remained the 
law of the land tln-ougliout the reign of 
Charles. 

To do this bloody work, Charles intro- 
duced the Inquisition into Holland, and 
appointed his sister, Mary, Dowager Queen 
of Hungary, Regent of the Netherlands. 
Tliis woman, worthy to be, as both she and 
the emperor were, first cousin to bloody 
Mary of England, wrote to her brother in 
1533, that in her opinion "all heretics, 



Ob THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 

whether repentant or not, should be perse- 
cuted with such severity that error might be 
at once extinguished, care being only taken 
that the provinces luere not entirely depopu- 
lated.^^ The awful work was thoroughly 
done. The number of Hollanders who, 
during the reign of Charles and in obedience 
to his edicts, had been beheaded, burned 
and buried alive for the offences above 
enumerated, swelled to the dreadful total of 
one hundred thousand ! 

Charles resigned his dominions at last to 
his son Philip, charging him, as one of his 
last injunctions, to maintain tlie Catholic 
religion ; then retired to his monastery at 
Juste to issue savage exhortations to his son 
to cut out the root of heresy. 

Philip the Second needed no exhortations. 
He had been well mated when he married 
" bloody Mary." He gave himself to " the 
rooting out of heresy," and the maintenance 
of Romanism, as the work to which his life 



HOLLAND. 87 

was consecrated; and more than once ex- 
pressed the willingness to sacrifice all his 
dominions, if need were, in the effort. Full 
of cunning yet destitute of wisdom, hesitat- 
ing and yet obsthiate, more utterly devoid 
of truth and honor than it is possible for 
language to set forth — so did he make his 
whole life an atmosphere of lying — bitter 
and relentless, yea, never yet cleared of 
deep suspicions concerning the murder of 
his eldest son. Philip devoted his earliest 
leisure to carry out the purpose of his life. 
In 1559 he appointed his sister, the duchess 
of Parma, Regent of the country ; and being 
about to withdraw into Spain, he solemnly 
charged her in public thoroughly to enforce 
the edicts and decrees made by the Emperor 
Charles, and now renewed by Philip himself, 
for the extirpation of all sects and heresies. 
The monarch celebrated his arrival in Spain 
with a splendid cmto da fe, in whicli he 



88 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 

feasted his eyes witli tlie sight of thirteen 
distinguished victims burning at the stake. 

Ah'eady the reformed religion had gained 
a strong foothold in Holland, coming in 
through the Lutheranism of Germany on 
one side, and tlie Calvinism of France on the 
other. The edict which Philip re-enacted 
and left as his parting gift to Holland 
inflicted its terrible penalty on those who 
should print, write, copy, keep, conceal, buy, 
sell or give any book or writing composed 
by Calvin, Luther, Zwingle, and other here- 
tics — those who should injure images of the 
virgin or the saints — those who should be 
present at any Protestant meetings — all lay 
persons who should read, teach, or dispute 
concerning the Holy Scriptures, openly or 
secretly — those who should entertain any of 
the opinions of Luther, Calvin, &c. The 
penalty was burning alive, and forfeiture of 
all the property. If they repented, the men 
might receive the mercy of being executed 



HOLLAND. 89 

with the sword, the women of bemg buried 
alive. Any person harboring or supplying 
a suspected heretic, or failing to denounce 
him, should receive the heretic's doom. A 
bounty was offered to the informer ; and the 
traitor who should attend a " conventicle ' 
and then betray his friends, should receive a 
full pardon. 

Spanish soldiery were left, and new 
bishops appointed in Holland, to aid in exe- 
cuting the destined work. Peter Titelman 
and a dozen other inquisitors sprang eagerly 
to their calling. The prisons swarmed with 
victims, and the streets with processions to 
the stake. Occasionally the dull routine of 
strangling, burning and burying alive, was 
relieved by some such case as that of Ber- 
trand le Bias, who had snatched a conse- 
crated wafer from the priest, and with the 
exclamation, " Misguided men, do you deem 
this thing to be Jesus Christ your Lord and 
Saviour ? " had broken it to fragments, and 

8* 



90 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 

trampled it on the ground. This man was 
thrice put to the torture. He was dragged, 
on a hurdle, witli his mouth closed with an 
iron gag, to the market place. His right 
hand and foot were burned and twisted off 
between two red-hot irons — his tongue torn 
out by the roots, and the iron gag again 
applied. With his arms and legs fastened 
together behind his back, he was then fast- 
ened by the middle of his body to an iron 
chain, and swung back and forth over a slow 
fire till he was roasted. 

Sometimes a whole family were taken off; 
tluis John de Swarte, his wife and four chil- 
dren were all burned together. Secret 
drowning was substituted, to some extent, 
for public burning, to take away the glory 
of the martyr's death. And so the work 
went on. Still the hiquisitors complained 
of delay. Philip urged from Spain. At 
length tlie phrenzy of the people was 
aroused. Religious assemblies met every 



HOLLAND. 91 

where under arms — and field preaching 
spread in all directions. Pledges of resist- 
ance began to be made throughout the prov- 
inces, and confederations formed. The 
great religious assemblies — or camp-meet- 
ings — where the worshipers came all armed 
to the teeth, sometimes numbered fifteen or 
even twenty thousand persons. A fierce 
popular outbreak rose in Antwerp, and in a 
single night the magnificent cathedral, 
wliose spire rose five luuidred feet, and 
wliose interior was adorned with the most 
gorgeous and costly decorations — a maze of 
art and wealth — was completely disembow- 
eled of its images, its relics, and all its 
treasures, and made a wreck within. The 
affrighted Regent was about to fly from the 
country, and was with difficulty restrained. 
The Protestants obtahied permission from 
the terrified government to hold their relig- 
ious assemblies unmolested, till advice 
should be received from the king. Envoys 



92 THE PILGRIBI CHURCH. 

are sent to Spain, asking the abolition of the 
inquisition, revocation of the edicts, and 
pardon of offenders. Philip dissembled, and 
meditated meanwhile the most awful ven- 
geance. 

At length all was ready. An armed 
invasion of Holland is resolved upon ; and 
ten thousand chosen and veteran Spanish 
soldiers are detached under the command 
of the duke of Alva. The name of this man 
has come down to us laden with infamy. 
He was the ablest general in Europe, and 
was sixty years of age. Cruel, unscrupulous 
and indifferent to public opinion, he was in 
every respect a fit instrument to execute the 
designs of Philip. 

One can almost see that cast-iron man, 
" tall, thin, erect, with a small head, a long 
visage, lean, yellow cheek, dark, twinkling 
eyes, adust complexion, black, bristling hair, 
and long, sable-silvered beard," as he 
marches on his track of perfidy and blood ; 



HOLLAND. 93 

and that veteran army, accompanied by a 
corps of tivo thousand prostitutes^ regularly 
enrolled and distributed as part of the equip- 
ment, as it wound on its way to butcher, 
burn and ravish for the sake of the " holy 
Catholic religion." 

No resistance at first was offered. The 
cities of Holland surrendered their keys. 
Two chief nobles of Holland, Counts Egmont 
and Horn, trusting the lying assurances of 
Alva and his master Philip, are decoyed 
within Alva's grasp, and he passes his arm 
lovingly over the neck of Egmont, already 
devoted to the block. In a few days they 
are hurried from the banquet to the prison, 
and soon after their headless bodies lay on 
the scaffold in the great square of Brussels. 
The execution of eighteen other prisoners 
of distinction had just preceded ; and long 
before their tragic end the streams of blood 
had been pouring forth like water. 

Alva had established a court superseding 



94 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 

all other tribunals, to be known in history, 
forever, as the Blood Council. This coTirt, 
in horribly sweephig terms, pronounced 
guilty of treason, all who had ever signed a 
petition against the new bishops, the inquisi- 
tion or the edicts ; all who had under any 
circumstances tolerated public preaching ; 
those who had ever omitted resistance to the 
field preaching, tlie image-breaking, the pre- 
sentation of a remonstrance by the nobles ; 
or who should have asserted that the king- 
did not possess the right to deprive all the 
provinces of their liberties, or who should 
have maintained that this court — utterly 
illegal though it was — was bound in any 
manner to respect any laws and charters ; — 
and the punishment of treason was pro- 
nounced to be instant death. The method 
of the court was as summary as its character 
was arbitrary. Its examination of evidence 
was the merest mockery, and individuals 
arrested for trial were not seldom executed 



HOLLAND. 95 

before their names were reached. Nothino- 
ill modern history, but the Revohitionary 
Tribunal in France, two liundred years 
later, will compare witli it. In three 
months it had destroyed eighteen hundred 
lives, and was just enterhig on its work. 
Men were sentenced by platoons. In a 
single day, for example, eighty-four inhabit- 
ants of Valenciennes were condemned; on 
another day forty-six inhabitants of Malines ; 
on another, nhiety-fivc from different parts 
of Flanders. A grand swoop was made on 
the holiday of Shrovetide, and five hundred 
victims caught and executed. Anguish was 
carried into every village and almost every 
family in the land. Alva told the deputies 
of Antwerp that " his majesty would rather 
the whole land should become an uninhab- 
ited wilderness, than that a single dissenter 
should exist within its territory." 

It seemed as though this threat was to be 
made good. In February, 1568, a decree 



96 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 

of the inquisition pronounced sentence of 
death on all the inhabitants of the Nether- 
lands, as heretics. From this sentence of 
death on three millions of men, women and 
children, only a few persons, especially 
named, were excepted. The king's procla- 
mation confirmed the sentence, and ordered 
its execution. The intention, of course, was 
not actually to slaughter all, but to give 
complete facility for the destruction of any. 
The Blood Council wrought the harder. 
The solenmities of Holy Week were followed 
by the fall of eight hundred heads. To 
avoid all disturbance as the victims marched 
through the streets on such occasions, they 
were gagged by having the tongue thrust 
through an iron ring, and then seared by a 
hot iron and thus made fast. It were a 
mere harrowing of the feelings further to 
detail these proceedings. Enough that 
when Alva resigned his command of six 
years' duration, he boasted that eighteen 



HOLLAND. 97 

thousand and six hundred persons liad been 
sent by him to execution alone, — besides the 
countless victims who had been slaughtered 
in his military murders. More than a 
hundred thousand men abandoned their 
country. 

Just about this time the noble Baron 
Montiguy, who had left his young four- 
months bride to go as ambassador to Spain, 
and had lain there four years in confme- 
ment, was secretly strangled in prison. All 
the complicated details of his private mur- 
der, were arranged minutely by king Philip 
with a man of awful perfidy and falsehood, 
now revealed after the lapse of three centu- 
ries, which almost staggers belief. 

The noble Prince of Orange rallied his 
countrymen to resistance. Ill-supplied and 
feebly supported, some opening successes 
were followed by bitter reverses ; and the 
Hollanders abandoned the struggle. Fresh 
slaughters succeeded. In the infatuation of 



98 T U E r I L K I M C U U R C H . 

his viotorios. Alva imposed the most exhaust- 
ing and even ruinous taxes on the ^veaUh 
aud trade of IloUand. All business was 
arrested. The people stood appalled, and 
fooling at length their forlorn aud desperate 
condition, again set up the standard of 
revolt. The Prinee of Orange, wlio from 
an outward CathoUe, had been led along 
until he beeame not only a Protestaut, but 
a deeply religious man, with an unlaltering 
trust in God amid reverses aud ingi*atitude, 
and soiuetimes beggary and desertion, like 
a very father of his coimtry. led the nation. 
Fivm the begim\ing of his r..■.^^• :; •.:; loT-, 
he pi\">olaimed ptr/t'ct />::'. :/ ili^ioji. 
\mdor penalty of death to those who in- 
fringed it. 

Hardly had success and hope began to 
ei'O'VNni his struggles, when lie was thiuider- 
struck aiui deep gloom was cast upon his 
prospects by the *' massacre of Saiiit Ixu-- 
tholomew/' The neighbormg monarch. 



HOLLAND. 99 

Charles IX., of France, who had pledged 
him aid, gave from his royal palace the signal 
of that havoc, and from his palace window, 
with gun in hand, shot at his subjects ; and 
within thirty days the blood of unknown 
thousands of Protestants (from 25,000 to 
100,000) watered the streets of Paris and 
the villages of France. The pope of Rome 
in grand procession with his cardinals, went 
to the church of St. Mai^k to render thanks 
to God for this signal grace ; Philip of Spain 
congratulated the monarch of France not 
only for the valorous exploit, but for an 
event to which " he owed the preservation 
of the Netherlands." Alva is stimulated, 
his victims disheartened. Wliy detail the 
awfiil scenes that marked the taking of such 
places as Zutphen and Naarden, when in the 
former place the orders were to spare not 
a smgle man alive, nor leave a house un- 
burned, and where the citizens were stabbed, 
or hung upon their own shade trees, or 



100 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 

stripped naked and turned into the fields to 
freeze in the wintery nights, or hung by the 
feet upon the gallows to be four days and 
nights in perishing, — and, at last, five hun- 
dred of them tied two and two, baek to 
back, and drowned in the river Yssel : and 
in the latter plaee, beside all other eoneeiva- 
ble horrors carried on with shouts of laugh- 
ter as a wild amusement, the soldiers even 
ill some cases drank the blood from their 
victims* veins. And both here and in every 
place whieh the Spaniards took, the women 
were surrendered to the worst outrages that 
could be mflieted on them. 

Such scenes as these marked their path, 
and the pen is weary to record over 
and over these same dreadful outracres. 
Throughout this whole career, " men were 
tortured, beheaded, hanged by the neck and 
legs, burned before slow fires, pmched to 
death with red-hot tongs, broken on the 
wheel, starved, and ilayed alive. Tlieir 



HOLLAND. 101 

skills stripped from the living body, were 
stretched upon drums, to be beaten in the 
march of their brethren to the gallows." 

Still the patriots rallied nobly. There 
was the long and desperate defence of Har- 
lem, in which even a military company of 
women did noble service, and m which an 
army of 30,000 besiegers left 12,000 of their 
number dead around the city, before the 
absolutely starving inhabitants surrendered. 
There was the siege of Alkmaar, in which 
eight hundred soldiers and thirteen hundred 
citizens, resisted sixteen thousand Spanish 
troops and in three terrible assaults were 
driven back, while every living man was on 
the walls ; and not alone cannon balls and 
bullets, but boiling water, pitch and oil, 
melted lead, tarred and burning hoops, were 
hurled forth, and amid the flying missiles, 
undaunted women and children passed back 
and forth with powder and ball for their 

fathers and brothers, until even some of the 
9* 



102 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 

Spanish soldiers suffered themselves to be 
run through the body rather than again 
advance to the walls ; and their commander 
learning that the Prince of Orange had 
already given orders to cut down the dykes 
and let the waters of the ocean flood the 
land, called off his fiends of war. Every 
thing, indeed, was at stake for Alkmaar ; 
for Alva had privately declared that he 
"would not leave a single creature alive." 

Alva at length, laden with crime and 
detestation was permitted to retire. His 
successor made from time to time some 
show of reconciliation ; but the attempt at 
subjugation still went on. Philip's purpose 
was not to be shaken. The struggle con- 
tmued, marked by various successes and 
many reverses too. One of the most gallant 
things in history was the long and triumph- 
ant defence of Leyden. One of the most 
awful chapters in the annals of military 
crime was the sacking of Antwerp, still 



HOLLAND. 103 

known as "the Spanish Fury" — in which 
every conceivaDle atrocity ran riot, and 
eight thousand citizens were slaughtered, 
six millions of property destroyed by fire, 
and at least six millions more were carried 
off by the Spaniards. More desperate, reso- 
lute, and united grew the resistance of Hol- 
land. Often defeated, never despairing, 
always trusting in the God to whom he com- 
mitted all, Orange finally came off victorious. 
In a time of his deepest discouragement 
and destitution of all foreign help, he replied 
to the despondent inquiry of one of his 
advisers: "You ask if I have entered into 
a firm treaty with any great king or poten- 
tate, to which I answer, that before I ever 
took up the cause of the oppressed Chris- 
tians in these provinces, I had entered into a 
close alliance with the King of kings ; and I 
am firmly convinced that all who put their 
trust in Him, shall be saved by His almighty 
hand. The God of armies will raise up 



104 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 

armies for us to do battle with our enemies 
and His own." And the God of armies 
did remember him. The interpositions of 
Heaven seemed quite as remarkable, and as 
indispensable too, as in our own Revolution, 
ary war. 

Seven provinces formed the Republic of 
the United Netherlands. Met by the Span- 
ish commanders with alternate attempts at 
bribery and assassination, the Prince of 
Orange fell at length by the assassin's hand 
in 1584. His son and successor, Maurice, 
followed in his steps with a constant suc- 
cession of battles, sieges and victories, till at 
length the peace of Antwerp, formed in the 
very year after the arrival of the Pilgrims, 
gave a twelve years' breathing spell to the 
harassed land. 

But for many years before the establish- 
ment of peace, Holland became the refuge 
of the persecuted in all parts of Europe. 
Thousands expelled by Spanish cruelty from 



HOLLAND. 105 

Southern Netherlands, (now Belgium,) 
Huguenots from France, and Puritans from 
England, flocked into the Northern Nether- 
lands, now Holland. At Rotterdam, the 
Hague, Leyden, Utrecht, and other places, 
there were English churches formed on the 
Presbyterian plan, as well as those of Epis- 
copal government. 

The great and flourishing city of Amster- 
aam especially was a point of attraction. 
For fifteen years already, when the Pilgrims 
arrived, there had been an Independent 
Puritan Churcn in Amsterdam, and another 
was formed just before their arrival. Among 
these were many of the men who had lain 
in the prisons of London, when Barrowe and 
Greenwood and Penry were summoned forth 
to the scaffold. The court and the bishops 
in England, after the execution of Penry, 
staggered by the odium of executing for 
treason men who died with the strongest 
expressions of loyalty on their lips, had 



106 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 

cleared the prisons of them by sentence of 
banishment. And here they had long been 
in Amsterdam, with their pastors, Francis 
Johnson and Henry Ainsworth. There 
were more than three hundred communi- 
cants in the older church at Amsterdam. 



LEYDEN. 107 



CHAPTER VI. 

LEYDEN. 

The pilgrims landed in Amsterdam. Brews- 
ter may perhaps have been there when he 
was in Holland, more than twenty years 
before. Even to his eyes it must have been 
greatly changed ; trade and wealth had 
flowed in, until the city was almost three 
times as large as then. To the other mem- 
bers of the little band it was a strange sight, 
" all so far differing," they say, " from their 
plain country villages, wherein they were 
bred and had so long lived, that it seemed 
they were come into a new world." The 
wealth and luxury that revelled around, 
only stood in stronger contrast with their 
own destitution and almost beggary. Hear 



108 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 

their sad and yet manly reminiscence : 
" Though they saw fair and beautiful cities, 
flowing with abundance of all sorts of wealth 
and riches, yet it was not long before they 
saw the grim and grisly face of poverty 
coming upon them like an armed man, with 
whom they must buckle and encounter, and 
from whom they could not fly. But they 
were armed with faith and patience against 
him and all his encounters ; and though 
they were sometimes foiled, yet by God's 
assistance they prevailed and got the vic- 
tory." In truth, with the exception of a very 
few persons, like Brewster and Bradford, 
they were originally men of small means, 
and what little they possessed had been 
pretty thoroughly stripped away in the hard- 
ships of their removal. Even Brewster was 
now reduced like the rest. And the difficulty 
was for men who had been brought up in 
agricultural occupations, to maintain them- 



LEYDEN. 109 

selves in a country that depended so largely 
on its trade and manufactures. 

But they did not remain long in Amster- 
dam. For the sake of their religious peace, 
these tempest-tossed men were willing to 
make another removal within a year, " though 
they well knew," so they say, " it would be 
much to the prejudice of their outward 
estates, both at the present and in the 
future." They found the independent 
churches at Amsterdam in the midst of a 
contention, with the strongest prospect of 
its increase rather than its diminution. It 
is the misfortune of all human movements, 
however good, often to be discredited by a few 
unworthy individuals. The better the cause 
and the more of courage and zeal it requires, 
the greater the liability to be weighed down 
by individuals who possess " zeal without 
knowledge," and who push that zeal beyond 
all the bounds of wisdom, reason and 
charity. So the Pilgrims found it to be in 

10 



110 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 

Amsterdam. The chiirch itself was a mis- 
cellaneous collection ; and three sources of 
trouble had sprung up. Mr. Jolm Smyth 
had led off a secession church, upon a singu- 
lar mixture of Baptist and Perfectionist 
principles, with certam fanatical doctrines, 
such as that flight in time of persecution 
was unlawful, and the smgmg of set words 
or verses to God was unauthorized. In the 
original church trouble had arisen about a 
case of discipUne, which grew out of certam 
excessive views upon the plainness of female 
dress. And finally, one of the pastors of 
that church, Mr. Johnson, advocated Presby- 
terian views of church government, while 
Mr. Auisworth and the bulk of the church 
were Congregational. Li view of the 
present and the coming troubles, Robinson 
and liis church determined to remove 
'• before they were engaged " in them. 

Leyden became their home m Holland. 
And thoudi '* not so beneficial to their out- 



LEYDEN. Ill 

ward means of living" as Amsterdam, no 
place was invested with more befitting asso- 
ciations for such a band. It was but about 
thirty years smce the city had braved and 
vanquished still more terrific foes than 
theirs. One of the noblest defences in the 
records of history was made at Ley den. In 
1574, after a blockade of five months, and 
while scantily supphed and almost without 
troops, the city was invested by the Spanish 
army, and girdled with sixty-two redoubts 
so effectually that scarcely any thing but a 
carrier-pigeon could find its way out or m. 
The citizens felt, as did the Prince of 
Orange, that the fate of the coimtry hinged 
on their manhood, and girded themselves 
solemnly and resolutely to the work of 
resistance. The food which they had early 
weighed out on allowance, soon failed. Tlie 
flesh of horses, dogs and rats, weeds and 
every substance by which human life can be 
protracted, were eaten and exhausted. One 



112 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 

only hope remained — to break down the 
dykes and sluices and let the ocean drive 
out their invaders. To this appalling deso- 
lation of a vast territory, the consent of the 
States of Holland was asked — and given. 
" Better a drowned land," said they, " than 
a lost land." The dykes were opened, but a 
contrary wind long kept back the waters. 
Starvation began. Anxious messages were 
sent to the Prince to hasten the relief; but, 
alas ! broken down with his overwhelming 
cares, a raging fever was coursing through 
his veins. Day after day they mounted the 
ancient tower and looked despairingly 
towards the ocean, fifteen miles away. The 
enemy taunted them. Once, indeed, a band 
of the more faint-hearted citizens thronged 
the house of their burgomaster and de- 
manded a surrender. " I tell you," replied 
the haggard but undaunted man, " I have 
made an oath to hold the city, and may God 
give me strength to keep my oath ! I can 



LEYDEN. 113 

die but once. ... I know that we shall 
starve if not soon relieved ; but starvation is 
better than the dishonored death which is 
the only alternative. Take my body to 
appease your hunger, but expect no surren- 
der from me." They catch the flame- 
return to the walls— and hurl new defiance 
to the enemy. " Ye call us rat-eaters and 
dog-eaters ; and it is true. So long, then, 
as ye hear dog bark, or cat mew, within 
these walls, ye may know that the city holds 
out. And when all has perished but our- 
selves, be sure that we will each eat our left 
arms, retainhig our right to defend our 
women, our liberty, and our religion, against 
the foreign tyrant." 

At length Orange recovered. A violent 
gale from the north-west piled up the waters 
of the ocean in huge masses, and sent them 
pouring through the broken dykes, The 
whole country around Leyden became a vast 
lake, over which those anxious eyes soon 

10* 



114 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 

saw the fleet of Orange approaching to their 
relief. From one chief fortress the Span- 
iards fled in terror along the dykes and 
causeways, and were drowned and slain as 
they went. That night the remainder of 
the besieging army disappeared in silence. 
In the morning the famished citizens rushed 
with frantic eagerness to meet their deliver- 
ers and their food. Then they marched in 
solemn procession to the great church to 
give thanks to God. Prayer was offered ; 
and thousands of voices lifted the song of 
praise, but broke down with an uncon- 
trollable weeping. Six thousand of their 
dear friends had died of starvation. 

Among the privileges bestowed on the 
city for its heroic defence, was the founda- 
tion of the University of Ley den. Five 
months only from the close of the siege the 
city was all astir with the inauguration cere- 
monies. The University soon became 
famous, and has been adorned with many 



LEYDEN. 115 

nam.es of European reputation. Such 
names as these, Grotms, Descartes, Scaliger 
and Boerhaave, are found m the Hst of its 
professors ; and the city itself was called the 
Athens of the West, and the North Star of 
Holland. 

To Leyden came the Pilgrims, " valuing 
peace and their spiritual comfort," says 
Bradford, " above any other riches whatso- 
ever; and at length they came to raise a 
comfortable living with hard and continual 
labor." Bradford himself learned the art 
of silk-dyeing. Brewster taught Dutch 
students the English language, and after a 
time became quite popular as a teacher. 
And toward the latter portion of the resi- 
dence in Leyden he set up a printing-press 
and issued several religious books that were 
prohibited in England, till at length the 
British government again set its watchful 
eye upon him, and reached out its long arm 



116 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 

after him. He was thought to be arrested 
once ; but the drunken officer had seized the 
wrong man. He was followed so close, 
however, that during the last year which the 
company spent in Holland, Brewster and his 
family, with all their goods, were lying 
snugly concealed in England, probably in 
London, where it is thought he kept close 
till the Mayflower sailed. Others of the 
expatriated band were weavers, who made a 
living by their looms, which they carried 
with them. 

Thus they resorted to every lawful device 
for a subsistence. They succeeded — ^but by 
the hardest labor. It was " great labor and 
hard fare," and "it was low with many 
of them.'* Their admirable and Christian 
traits helped them not a little. "Wlien 
they wanted money tlieir word would be 
taken amongst the Dutch, because they had 
found by experience how careful they were 
to keep their word, and saw them so painful 



LEYDEN. 117 

[pains-taking] and diligent in their call- 
ings." The preference was even given to 
them in their labors, and their custom was 
sought by the tradesmen, " for their honesty 
and diligence." So unexceptionable was 
their deportment, that not long before their 
departure, the magistrates m pubhc court 
bore honorable testimony to them : " These 
English," said they to the Walloons of the 
French Church, " have lived among us now 
this twelve years, and yet we have never had 
any suit or accusation come against any of 
them. But your strifes are continual." 
Mr. Robinson their pastor — for Mr. Clifton 
had remained at Amsterdam — was soon 
recognized as a rare man, and treated with 
much consideration. It so happened that 
the two Di\inity Professors in the Univer- 
sity, Episcopius and Polyander, became 
engaged in a warm controversy on what is 
called Ai'minianism — Arminius himself hav- 
ing been a professor in the University, and 



118 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 

died on the year of Robinson's arrival. 
Episcopius was an Arminian, Polyander a 
Calvinist. Robinson, of course, held with 
the latter ; and, by his earnest and pressing 
solicitation, three times appeared in discus- 
sion against Episcopius. And, says Brad- 
ford, " the Lord did so help him to defend 
the truth and foil his adversary that he put 
him to an apparent non-plus in this great 
and public audience." It has been sug- 
gested that this claiming of the victory may 
be the result of friendly partiality. But 
whether this be so or not, Robinson's pub- 
lished works show him to have been a man 
of rare abilities ; and it is clear that in 
Leyden his estimation was high. After six 
years' residence he was received as a mem- 
ber of the University — a privilege attended 
with the rather singular benefits of exempt- 
ing him from the control of the town magis- 
trates, and entitling him to half a tun of 
beer every month, and about ten gallons of 



L E Y D E N . 119 

wine every three months — if he chose to 
receive them. And when at length he died, 
five years after the sailing of the Mayflower 
and the Speedwell, the " magistrates, minis- 
ters, scholars and most of the gentry of 
Leyden mourned his death as a public loss, 
and followed him to the grave." 

Here "they continued many years in a 
comfortable condition, enjoying much sweet 
and delightful society and spiritual comfort 
together, in the ways of God, under the able 
ministry and prudent government of Mr. 
John Robinson and Mr. William Brewster, 
who was an assistant unto him in the place of 
an elder, unto which he was now called and 
chosen by the church ; so that they grew in 
knowledge and other gifts and graces of the 
Spirit of God ; and lived together in peace, 
and love, and holiness." And the same writer 
who makes this statement, and who himself 
was there from the beginning to the end, adds 
a testimony which need not be disputed : " I 



120 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 

know not but that it may be spoken to the 
honor of God, and without prejudice to any, 
that such was the humble zeal and fervent 
love of this people towards God and his 
ways, and the single-heartedness and sincere 
affection one towards another, that they came 
as near the primitive pattern of the first 
churches as any other church of these latter 
times has done, according to their rank and 
quality." 

Meanwhile many persons from various 
parts of England joined them, until their 
number amoimted at last to more than three 
hundred persons. Here they were joined by 
the good soldier, afterwards their military 
chief in America, Myles Standish. He had 
served among the English troops sent by 
Queen Elizabeth to aid the Hollanders in 
their struggles for liberty ; and encountering 
the Pilgrims at Ley den, cast in his lot with 
tlieirs. The town of Duxbury, in Massa- 
chusetts, where he afterwards had his home 



LEYDEN. 121 

and laid his bones to rest, commemorates his 
recollections of the English Duxbury, his 
earlier home, where the family name of 
Standish is still perpetuated in one of the 
oldest families of Lancashire. Edward 
Winslow, twenty-two years old, travelhig on 
the continent with his wife, arrived at Leyden 
and joined them too — afterwards their gov- 
ernor in Plymouth. Here, probably, John 
Carver, one of their deacons and the first of 
their governors, found them. 

During their residence here, their views 
were Uberalized towards men of other true 
Christian churches ; and they were displaying 
that spirit of broad charity which has com- 
monly marked the congregational churches 
in later times. Robinson had been " more 
rigid in his course at first than towards his 
latter end." But it was their practice 
freely to commune with the French and the 
Dutch churches ; they invited a Scotch 
Presbyterian minister to their communion 
11 



122 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 

table in Ley den, though the invitation was 
for prudential reasons, declined. And in 
regard to the English Church, Eobinson 
" advised us by all means to endeavor to 
close with the godly party of the kingdom of 
England, and rather to study union than 
division." And while they objected to the 
" mixed communion " of Christians and 
impenitent men together, and condemned 
the government of that church by bishops 
and a monarch as unscriptural, and therefore 
denied the National Church, as national, to 
be a true church ; they never objected to 
listening to the preaching of the evangelical 
ministers of that church, nor to communing 
with them and their godly communicants 
separate from the whole congregation ; and 
they have left on record the statement that 
" there are [in that church] some parish 
assemblies that are true churches, by virtue 
of an implicit covenant among themselves. 



LEYDEN. 123 

ill which regard the Church of England may 
be held and called a true church."* 

But they cannot remain here. Eobinson 
and Brewster have been anxiously looking at 
their condition, and feel that they are not 
accomplishing their best usefulness. They 
lay their views before various brethren, pro- 
posing another removal. From "private 
discussion " it passes to " public agitation ; " 
and " the congregation, with fasting and 
prayer, seek the Lord to direct us." Ob- 
jections are made, " many fears and doubts " 
are expressed. 

Robinson and Brewster, " with some of 
the sagest members," urge these reasons: 
First, they are shut up from all prospect of 
growth. It is so difficult to maintain them- 
selves that few persons joined them, and 
some who came could not stay. Surrounded 
on all sides by foreigners, they are afraid 

* Bradford's Dialogue, in Young's Chronicles of the 
Pilgrims, p. 416. 



124 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 



■« 



they may even lose the English language in 
process of time. Secondly, the original stock 
of emigrants are growing old and wearing 
out with " their great and continual labors;" 
and there is danger that the whole enter- 
prise should eventually fade away. Thirdly, 
they are inexpressibly anxious for their 
children. " We were unable to give sucli 
education to our children as we ourselves had 
received." Nay, their sons and daughters, 
were " oppressed with the weight of their 
labors, and became decrepit in early 
youth, the vigor of nature being consumed 
in the very bud." But worst of all, and 
" of all sorrows most heavy to be borne," 
those children were in danger of becoming 
morally " degenerate and corrupted." The 
Holy Sabbath, which they were accustomed 
to reverence, Avas then, as now upon the 
continent of Europe, constantly profaned on 
every hand around. Their sons driven by 
the pressure within, and drawn by the 



L E Y D E N . 125 

temptations without, were breaking away 
from parental control; some went to sea, 
some joined the army, and others fell into 
courses tending still more " to the great 
grief of their parents and the dishonor of 
God." A last and apparently the greatest 
reason was their burning desire to spread the 
gospel " in the remote parts of the world." 
Apparently their isolated condition forced 
upon them the conviction that they were in a 
measure wasting their influence and living 
only for themselves, when there was much 
work to do for the kmgdom of Christ. And 
they had thought of America as the place 
of their labors. 

These tilings they urge on their brethren. 
There are some to urge strong counter 
reasons. It was a design attended with 
"many inconceivable perils." There are 
"the casualties of the seas," and "the length 
of the voyage," such as the aged and the 
feeble " could never endure," the " miseries 
11* 



126 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 

of the land," " liable to famine, nakedness 
and the want of all things," with probability 
of disease from the " change of air, diet and 
water ;" " continual danger of the savage 
people, cruel, barbarous and treacherous, 
not content only to kill, but flaying men 
alive with the shells of fishes, cutting off the 
joints and members and broiling them on 
coals, and causing men to eat the collops of 
flesh in their sight ; witji other cruelties too 
horrible to be related." Then where was 
the money to come from, for the transporta- 
tion ; where the supplies to sustain them on 
their arrival ? Others had lamentably failed 
in the attempt. They themselves had found 
it hard enough to arrive in Holland and live 
even in that rich and well-regulated com- 
monwealth. How would it be in the wilder- 
ness beyond the broad ocean ? 

All these objections were urged; and 
weighty ones they were. No wonder they 
" moved the bowels of men to grate within 



LEYDEN. 127 

them," and made '^ the weak to quake and 
tremble." But Robinson and his friends 
answered by frankly admitting the difficul- 
ties, and asserting the need of a correspond- 
ing courage. "The dangers," said they, 
" are great, but not desperate, and the 
difficulties many, but not invincible ; for 
although many of them are likely, yet they 
are not certain. It may be that some of the 
things feared may never befall us ; others by 
providence, care, and the use of good means, 
may in a great measure be prevented ; and 
all of them through the help of God, by 
fortitude and patience may be either borne 
,or overcome. True it is that such attempts 
are not to be made and undertaken but 
upon good ground and reason, not rashly or 
lightly, as many have done for curiosity or 
hope of gain. But our condition here is not 
ordinary. Our ends are good and honora- 
ble, our calling lawful and urgent ; and 
therefore we may expect the blessing of God 



128 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 

in our proceeding. Yea, though we should 
lose our lives in this action, yet we may have 
comfort in so doing- ; and our endeavors will 
be honorable. We live here as men in exile 
and in a poor condition, and as great miser- 
ies may possibly befall us in this place ; for 
the twelve years truce are out and there is 
nothing but beating of drums and preparing 
for war, the events of which are always 
uncertain. The Spaniard may prove as 
cruel as the savages of America; and the 
famine and pestilence are as sore here as 
there, and less liberty to look out for a 
remedy."* 

The discussion was long and anxious. At 
length the leaders prevail, and a majority 
vote decides the question. They will go. 

But whither? Here was another question 
difficult of solution. New England never 
once entered their thoughts ; was never 

* These are the very words given by Bradford, 
changed only to the first person and the present tense. 



LEYDEN. 129 

alluded to. Some were for Guiana, "blessed 
with a perpetual spring," but endangered 
by the diseases of a tropical climate and 
exposed to the Spaniard. Others were for 
some part of Virginia, which was under 
English rule and already occupied by an 
English settlement. But here again was a 
difficulty. The colonizing of Virginia had 
been under express injunction from the king 
that all religious services should be held 
according to the forms of the Church of 
England. And should persecution arise, it 
might fare harder with them in that distant 
land than even in the mother country. 

They decide at length for the region held 
by the Virginia company. But they hope to 
live hi a distinct body by themselves ; and 
they have some friends of " rank and qual- 
ity " about the court, who " put them in 
good hope " that they might obtain of his 
majesty, James, of Hampton Court memory, 
" free liberty and freedom of religion." 



130 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 

Alas, they did not know that even while 
they were discussing the proposition, thq 
Solomon of his age was issuing a proclama- 
tion (in 1618) requiring the bishop of Lan- 
cashire to constrain all the Puritans in that 
diocese to conform or to leave the country. 

What terms they made, the next chapter 
will reveal. 



LONDON. 131 



CHAPTEE YII. 



LONDON. 



The little church had a long negotiation, 
and a hard bargain at last. For two years 
the matter was pending, and messengers and 
communications passing between Leyden 
and London. They felt, however, that their 
messengers " also found God going along 
with them ; " and perhaps they had good 
reason to deem it a special mark of His 
favor that they were enabled to go at all. 
The king's disposition towards the Puritans 
was rather embittered than softened,, since 
he had threatened to harry them out of tlie 
land or make them conform. And as the 
wolf bid the crane be thankful for getting 
lier head safe out of his jaws, so it was a 



132 THE PILGRIM 'CHURCH. 

special privilege that James, though he 
would grant no pledges, was willing to let 
them alone. 

Providentially it was so ordered that the 
Virginia Company, by reason of their past 
pecuniary ill success, were extremely anxious 
to find colonists, and were therefore disposed 
to do all in their power to favor the enter- 
prise. 

Another good providence had seemed to 
link Scrooby to Plymouth, in giving these 
friendless men a friend at court. It will be 
remembered that the last Archbishop of 
York who occupied the manor-house in 
which the little church held their first 
assemblies, was Archbishop Sandys, and that 
after his death the property passed to his 
son. Sir Samuel Sandys. Brewster had been 
for many years a tenant, and unquestionably 
a trusty tenant, of the latter. In this hour 
of need, another member of the same family 
came to their aid. Sir Edwin Sandys, ap- 



LONDON. 133 

parently a brother of Sir Samuel, who must 
have known well the history of this church 
and probably had personal knowledge of 
Brewster, a highly religious man as well as 
a person of ability and influence, was the 
chief agent in overcoming the difficulties in 
their way. He was one of the principal 
members of the Virginia Company. Sandys 
writes to Robinson and Brewster, after com- 
mending the discretion of their agents in 
1617, and promising all reasonable aid. 
" And so I betake you with this design, 
which I hope verily is the work of God, to 
the gracious protection and blessing of the 
highest." They reply, "with all thankful 
acknowledgment of your singular love, ex- 
pressing itself, as otherwise, so more specially 
in your great care and earnest endeavor of 
our good in this weighty business," and 
assure him that " under God, above all per- 
sons and things in the world we rely upon 
you, expecting the care of your love, the 

12 



134 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 

counsel of your wisdom, and the help and 
countenance of your authority." 

Just before this correspondence, John 
Carver and Robert Cushman had been sent, 
at the common expense, to London. Sandys 
had done his best to secure full religious 
liberty and " to have it confirmed under the 
king's broad seal." It was su.pposed to be 
practicable. Sandys procured the aid of Sir 
Robert Naunton, Secretary of State, to inter- 
cede with James ; and the Archbishop of 
Canterbury was also approached on the 
subject. But James was utterly inflexible. 
They so far prevailed that the king privately 
agreed to " connive at them and not molest 
them, provided they carried themselves 
peaceably." But to tolerate them publicly, 
under his seal, he would not consent for a 
moment. Some of their friends hoped that 
they would compromise the difficulty with 
the Church of England by having their 
ministers ordained by the bishops ; appa- 



LONDON. 135 

rently this was a condition made by the 
archbishop. They could not yield that 
point. For they held that every pastor is a 
bishop, and all pastors equal ; and that the 
power to ordain pastors is lodged in the 
church. 

Apparently it required some adroitness in 
their friends to secure what they did. For 
when some question was raised in the Privy 
Council about their religious practices, Rob- 
inson and Brewster, in reply, drew up two 
forms of statement, either to be presented as 
was thought best, though preferring the 
shorter and more general one, which was 
only ten lines in length. But when Sir 
John Wolstenholme, the gentleman to whom 
they were sent, had read them both, he 
declared that he would show neither of 
them, " lest he should spoil all." 

The refusal to pledge toleration was a 
great disappointment to the church. Some 
thought their enterprise rested on a pretty 



136 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 

" sandy foundation " now. Some regretted 
that they had ever applied, to be thus 
refused. But the leaders were resolute. 
They said that the king was willing enough 
to leave them unmolested, but was only 
influenced by reasons of his own for with- 
holding any public declaration. They 
added, too, that if the king's private assur- 
ance, already given, was good for nothing, 
then " a seal as broad as the house floor " 
would be equally worthless ; for with a dis- 
position to wrong them, there " would be 
means enough found to recall or reverse it. 
And they must herein rest on God's provi- 
dence as they had done in other things." 

They determine to rest on God's provi- 
dence. Cushman and Brewster are dis- 
patched to London to make the business 
arrangements. But by this time the 
Virginia company was engaged in an inter- 
nal broil, and the business was kept in 
suspense for a year or more. At length 



LONDON. 137 

when these troubles are settled, a patent is 
procured from the company, of which the 
only use was to encourage them for the 
time ; for, being made out in the name of a 
man who failed of going with him, it became 
of no value. 

But the hardest part was to adjust the 
penuniary affairs of the expedition. The 
church had not money enough to emigrate. 
One Thomas Weston, a London merchant of 
their acquaintance, whose brother was after- 
wards a troublesome neighbor at Weymouth 
in Massachusetts, came to Leyden, and 
urged them on with large assurances of aid 
from himself and his business friends. The 
best thing to be done was to form a joint- 
stock company in London that should 
advance the money, while the emigrants 
should give their personal labor ; and in the 
division of expected profits, each man should 
draw as much as so many pounds of stock. 
The arrangement was made accordingly ; 

12* 



138 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 

but, pressed by their necessities, the colo- 
nists were obliged to submit to a very 
oppressive scheme. Cushman and Carver 
again were their agents to negotiate this 
matter ; and their efforts are attended with 
one continued series of annoyances. In- 
deed Cushman, though an active and an 
excellent man, proved not to be the most 
suitable negotiator. Robinson regretted the 
appointment of Cushman as one of two mis- 
takes which were made, because he was 
" most unfit to deal for other men by reason 
of his singularity, and too great indifference 
for any conditions." A part of this singu- 
larity seems to have consisted in the disposi- 
tion to act on his own single responsibility. 
For he exceeded his express instructions, 
and very considerably increased the hard- 
ship of the compact. 

The Leyden brethren had assented to the 
sharp bargain whereby each colonist should 
be reckoned in the partnership as equivalent 



LONDON. 139 

only to one share of ten pounds^ and in the 
division of property and profits at the end 
of seven years should draw only in that 
proportion. But they insisted that from 
this division should be exempted their 
houses, gardens and home fields, to be their 
own private property ; also that two days of 
each week should be reserved to them from 
their common-stock labors to expend on 
their own personal concerns. Cushman, 
without consulting his clients and therefore 
contrary to his express instructions, yielded 
these two important points. No doubt he 
found many difficulties in the way of any 
arrangement whatever. Some of the largest 
offers of money had been withdrawn after 
the long delay, on various pretexts, and con- 
cerning a good portion of the promised aid 
Cushman writes to Carver, "We may go 
scratch for it." The chief merchant-adven- 
turer, Weston, is lukewarm and does not 
fulfill his engagements to provide a ship. A 



140 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 

general diversity of views and even conten- 
tion prevails among the members of the 
joint-stock company in England. So to 
close the business, and prevent a certain and 
total failure, as Cushman alleges, he was 
compelled to waive all conditions. 

The church at Ley den, to a man, oppose 
the concession, and strongly remonstrate 
with their agent. Nay, some private com- 
plaints reached him that he had made " con- 
ditions fitter for thieves and bond-slaves than 
for honest men ; " while a series of formal 
objections is drawn up and sent him. 
Cushman, whose letters show him to be a 
little heady, draws up a reply so decidedly 
tart that, though still preserved, Bradford 
thinks it never was sent to Leyden, being- 
kept back by Carver. Other letters he did 
send, and the correspondence between him 
on the one side, and Bradford, Winslow, 
Fuller and Allerton, who wrote a joint letter 
on the other, is not destitute of grim wit. 



LONDON. 141 

Cushman demanded their reasons for op- 
posing his settlement, saying they must 
" think he had no brains ; " to which they 
reply quoting the remark, and " desiring 
him to exercise his brains therein, referring 
him to our pastor's former reasons, and then 
to the censure [judgment] of the godly 
wise." In a letter which crossed them on the 
way, (June 10, 1620,) Cushman says he had 
been so disheartened by discouragements on 
one side and complaints on the other, that he 
had declared he would give up his accounts 
to Carver and quit the whole enterprise, 
" with only his poor clothes on his back," 
but he " had gathered up himself by further 
consideration and resolved to make one trial 
more ; " that on calling upon Mr. Weston, 
the chief adventurer, he found him so dis- 
contented, as to have often said, "but for his 
promise, he would not meddle with the 
business further," but he also " at the last 
gathered up himself a little more, and com- 



142 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 

iiig to me two hours after, told me he would 
not leave it." So they resolved to hire a 
ship. He and Weston went together and 
examined a vessel of a hundred and eighty 
tons, " and a fine ship it is," says Cushman. 
It was the Mayflower. " And seeing our 
near friends there are so strait-laced, we hope 
to assure her without troubling them far- 
ther ; and if the ship prove too small, it 
fitteth well that such as stumble at straws 
already may rest them there [at Ley den ?] 
awhile, lest worse blocks come in the way 
ere seven years be ended." Referring again 
to the complaints, he says : " If men be set 
on it, let them beat the air ; I hope such as 
are my sincere friends will not think but I 
can give some reason of my actions. If I 
do such things as I cannot give reasons for, 
it is like you have set a fool about your 
business — and so turn your reproof to your- 
selves, and send another and let me come 



LONDON. 143 

again to my combs." (He was a wool- 
comber.) 

In the letter of Bradford and others, just 
referred to, the community at Leyden ex- 
pressly " require " Cushman " not to exceed 
the bounds of your commission, which was 
to proceed upon the conditions agreed upon 
and expressed in writing at your going over 
about it." Unless Mr. Cushman over- 
estimated the trouble, the whole scheme so 
far as the English adventurers were con- 
cerned, was at this time on the verge of 
dissolution. " To speak the truth, there is 
fallen already among us a flat schism, and 
we are readier to go to dispute than to set 
forward on a voyage." So, believing it, as 
he affirmed, to be the turning point of the 
enterprise he did what he was expressly for- 
bidden to do, and yielded the matters in 
question ; " otherwise all had been dashed, 
and many undone." He meanwhile con- 
cealed from his friends at Leyden what he 



144 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 

had done, alleging afterwards the want of 
time to notify them, and the danger of 
further delay. 

The band at Leyden were so opposed to 
the conditions proposed, that " four or five 
of the chief" members, even on their arrival 
in England on the way to Plymouth, " came 
resolved not to go upon those conditions," 
tlie knowledge of which had reached them 
only through circuitous channels. But, 
meanwhile, owing to the delay of Weston to 
provide shipping for the voyage — a matter 
committed to his charge — and other discour- 
agements experienced, " tlie state of tlungs 
at Leyden," Robinson writes to Carver, " is 
very pitiful ; there is great want of money 
and means to do needful things. Mr. Pick- 
ering will not defray a penny here, though 
Robert Cushman presumed on I know not 
how many hundred pounds from him and I 
know not whom." Some who have already 
paid in part, refuse to advance any more, 



LONDON. 145 

" till they see shipping provided, or a course 
taken for it. Nor do I think there is a man 
here," adds Robinson, " would pay any thing' 
if he had his money again in his purse,'''' 
This was but six weeks before the time of 
sailing. 

The final settlement of terms in London 
on the 1st of July, though the nature of the 
terms was concealed, seems to have set all 
again in motion. The "fine ship" May- 
flower is hired to sail from England, and the 
little Speedwell, one-third as large, is bought 
in Holland, to take colonists to join the 
Mayflower to aid in transporting them, and 
to remahi in America. By the terms 
arranged in London, there is a seven years' 
partnership of money and labor, all property 
for that length of time to be held in com- 
mon, and at the end of the time to be so 
divided that the London merchant who 
invested one hundred pounds, should receive 
ten times as much as the penniless laborer 

13 



146 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 

who gave himself. If, however, the laborer 
had ten pounds of his own to invest, for that 
also he should be entitled to a share in the 
profits. But there was no exemption of 
their homesteads from the final division, nor 
of two days in the week for private use, 
although Mr. Weston had assented to those 
terms in Leyden, and Mr. Cushman had 
been expressly required to insist upon them. 
It was agreed by the church that but part 
of them should go now, that part to be the 
youngest and strongest; that those who 
went should be volunteers ; that the majority 
should keep the pastor with them, and the 
minority the elder ; that " if [what an if !] 
the Lord should frown on our proceedings 
the colonists should return," and the breth- 
ren at Leyden should " assist and be helpful 
to them ; but if God should be pleased to 
fiivor them that went, then they also should 
endeavor to help over such as were poor and 
ancient and willing to come." 



LONDON. 147 

Such were the grave doubts tliat hung 
over this bold enterprise from the beginning ; 
and such the difficulties, often completely 
disheartening, that blocked the way. Yet 
these are only the beginning of sorrows. 
What weary, cloudy days — what restless, 
anxious nights — ^wliat plannings and misgiv- 
ings — what expectations and discourage- 
ments — what resolutions and recoils — ^what 
fervent prayers to God, hung round that 
critical step ! Is it not always so ? Is not 
every great and good enterprise born among 
trials and difficulties ? 

The final determination was not reached 
till they had held " a solemn meeting and a 
day of humiliation to seek the Lord for his 
direction." After a sermon from the be- 
loved Eobinson, in which he " strengthened 
them against their fear and encouraged tliem 
in their resolutions," the plans were matured 
and adopted. 



148 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

DELFT HAVEN. 

At Delft Haven, fourteen miles soutli-west 
of Leyden, lies the Speedwell in the river 
Meiise. It is the 21st of July. A boat is 
drawn lazily down the canal to the vessel, 
laden with the richest freight that ever left 
the ports of trading Holland. It is the band 
that now " knew they were Pilgrims, and 
lifted up their eyes to the heavens, their 
dearest country, and quieted their spirits " 
as they sadly " left that goodly and pleasant 
city which had been their resting-place near 
twelve years." 

The news had reached Leyden that all 
was ready. The companions in exile, then 
to be separated for a time, had " solemnly 



DELFT HAVEN. 149 

sought the Lord together.'' Their pastor 
took his text from E^a 8 : 21 : " And there 
at the river, by Ahava, I proclaimed a fast, 
that we might humble ourselves before our 
God, and seek of him a right way for us, 
and for our children, and for all our sub- 
stance." The text, as the reader will find 
by comparison, was not taken from king 
James' version — a version made while they 
were in Holland, though requested in the 
Conference of Hampton Court — but from 
the older Geneva version, which " of all 
translations was the worst," said his majesty, 
" because of the marginal notes, which 
allowed disobedience to kings." It was on 
this occasion that Mr. Robinson gave that 
memorable address breathing the highest 
style of Christian magnanimity and marking 
him as a man in advance of his times. 

" Brethren," said Mr. Robinson, " we are 
now quickly to part from one another, and 
whether I may ever live to see your faces on 

13* 



150 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 

earth any more, the God of heaven only 
knows ; but whether the Lord has appointed 
that or not, I charge you, before God and 
his blessed angels, that you follow me no 
farther than you have seen me follow the 
Lord Jesus Christ. 

" If God reveal any thing to you by any 
other instrument of his, be as ready to 
receive it as ever you were to receive any 
truth by my ministry ; for I am verily per- 
suaded the Lord has more truth yet to 
break forth out of his holy Word. For my 
part I cannot sufficiently bewail the condi- 
tion of the Eeformed Churches who are 
come to a period in religion, and will go at 
present no further than the instruments of 
their reformation. The Lutherans cannot 
be drawn to go beyond what Luther saw ; 
whatever part of his will our God has 
revealed to Calvin, they will rather die than 
embrace it ; . and the Calvinists, you see. 



DELFT HAVEN. 151 

stick fast where tliey were left by that great 
man of God, who yet saw not all things. 

" This is a misery much to be lamented ; 
for though they were burning and shining 
lights, in their times, yet they penetrated 
not into the whole counsel of God, but were 
they now living, would be as willing to 
embrace further light as that which they 
first received. I beseech you, remember it 
is an article of your church-covenant, that 
you receive whatever truth shall be made 
known to you from the written Word of 
God. Remember that, and every other 
article of your sacred covenant. But I must 
withal exhort you to take heed what you 
receive as truth ; examine it, consider it, 
and compare it with other scriptures of 
truth, before you receive it; for it is not 
possible the Christian world should cqme so 
lately out of such anti^christian darkness, 
and that perfection of knowledge shquld 
break fortli at once." 



152 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 

And among many other admonitions, not 
recorded, he urged a hearty co-operation 
with the non-conforming ministers of the 
Church of England, whose bishops had 
driven him and his from their country. 
" There will be no difference between them 
and you, when they come to the practice of 
the ordinances out of the kingdom." And 
he earnestly advised them " rather to study 
union with the godly party of the kingdom 
of England than division," and to see " liow 
near we might possibly without sin close 
with them, than in the least measure to 
affect division or separation from them." 

On this occasion the pastor's large house 
was thrown open for a feast given to them 
by the company that remained. There, 
says one of the departing band, "we re- 
freshed ourselves, after tears, with singing 
oi psalms, making joyful melody in our 
hearts as well as with our voices, there being 
many of our congregation very expert in 



DELFT HAVEN. 153 

music ; and indeed it was the siveetest mel- 
odij that ever mine ears heard^ Yes, there 
were many sweet voices there, that never 
sung together again this side of heaven — 
many that before a twelvemonth were to 
sing around the throne of God. 

Most of the brethren accomi^anied or fol- 
lowed them to the harbor of Delft Haven ; 
and some of their friends came thither from 
Amsterdam, a distance of thirty-six miles, to 
take leave of them. Again the departing 
company are "feasted." The long night 
wears away with " little sleep," but chiefly 
in "friendly entertainment, Christian dis- 
course, and other real expressions of true 
Christian love " between those who deeply 
felt that this might be their last opportunity. 
Next day the wind is fair. The rising tide 
warns them on board the Speedwell. Then 
comes the " sad and mournful parting,'^ 
with "sighs, and sobs, and prayers," with 
" tears gushing from every eye," and words 



154 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 

"that pierced each heart;" and even the 
Dutch strangers standing on the wharf and 
looking on "cannot refrain from tears." 
The pastor fell " upon his knees — and they 
all with him — and with watery cheeks com- 
mended them with the most fervent prayers 
to the Lord and his blessing. And then 
with mutual embraces they took their leave 
one of another ; which proved to be," says 
Bradford, " the last leave to many of them." 
Then as the little vessel parted from the 
wharf, Robinson and his companions stand 
looking mutely on, " unable to speak one to 
another for tlie abundance of sorrow to 
part." " We gave them," adds Winslow, 
" a volley of small shot and three pieces of 
ordnance, and so lifting up our hands to 
each other and our hearts for each other to 
the Lord our God, we departed, and found 
His presence witli us in the midst of our 
manifold straits." A quarter of a century 
after, as he informs us, the Dutch at Delft 



DELFT HAVEN. 155 

Haven " preserve the memory of the part- 
ing." "There was between iis that went, 
and the brethren that stayed, such love as 
indeed is seldom found on earth." ! sad 
and mournful parting ! 

With his accustomed considerateness Mr. 
Robinson sends by the Speedwell a confi- 
dential letter to Mr. Carver, then in Eng- 
land, intended apparently to forestall any 
apprehension that blame was laid upon him 
for the change made in the articles of agree- 
ment. He says he has a true feeling of 
Carver's "perplexity of mind and toil of 
body," recognizes the " great difficulties he 
had undergone," and congratulates him that 
he is now to have " the presence and help of 
so many godly and wise brethren, for bear- 
ing your part of the burden, who also will 
not admit into their hearts the least thought 
of suspicion of any negligence, at least pre- 
sumption, to have been in you, whatever 
they may think in others." He assures him 



156 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 

and his " good wife, my loving sister," fliat 
" my heart is with you and I will not fore- 
slow [delay] my bodily coming at the first 
opportunity." "I do ever commend my 
best affection unto you," continues the 
loving and beloved pastor to his deacon, 
" which if I thought you made any doubt of, 
I would express in more, and the same more 
ample and full words. And the Lord in 
whom you trust and whom you serve in this 
business and journey, guide you with his 
hand, protect you with his wing, and show 
you and us his salvation in the end, and 
bring us in the meanwhile together in the 
place desired, if such be his good will, for 
Christ's sake. Amen." 

The Mayflower lies at Southampton, three 
hundred miles distant, on the southern coast 
of England. A prosperous wind soon brings 
them thither. Carver, Cushman, Brewster 
probably, and a few friends direct from 
England, are waiting for them there. There 



DELFT HAVEN. 157 

is " a joyful welcome and mutual congratu- 
lations ; — ^and then to " business." How is 
it about tlie " alteration of the conditions." 
Mr. Carver pleaded that he was employed in 
procuring supplies at Southampton, and had 
no distinct knowledge of what Mr. Cushman 
had done at London. Mr. Cushman is in 
rather an awkward situation ; for liere are 
Winslow and Bradford and Fuller and 
Allerton, the four resolute men that desired 
him to exercise his brains on their reasons, 
and required him not to exceed his commis- 
sion. "We never gave Robert Cushman 
authority to make one article for ns, but 
only sent him to receive moneys upon arti- 
cles before agreed upon." How now, 
Robert Cushman ? He says he has " done 
nothing but what he was urged to partly by 
the grounds of equity, and more especially 
by necessity, otherwise all had been daslied 
and many undone." He also pleads that 
the other agents were satisfied to leave the 

14 



158 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 

management at London in his hands. But 
why did he not refer the matter to Leyden 
according to his express instructions ? " He 
could not well in regard to the shortness of 
the time ; and again he knew it would 
trouble them and hinder the business." 
They are no better satisfied. Mr. Martin, a 
new-comer fresh from Billerica in England, 
rather blunt in his speech, even remarks 
that " the merchants are blood-suckers " to 
require such conditions. Mr. Weston also 
comes up from London to see them off and 
to have the conditions confirmed. They tell 
Mr. Weston that " he knew right well that 
these were not according to the first agree- 
ment ; " nay, he himself had proposed in 
Leyden that the colonists should retain their 
own homesteads — that matter had all been 
settled before a penny had been advanced. 
And as they are not at liberty to yield the 
point without consent of their friends now in 
Leyden, and indeed had been specially 



DELFT HAVEN. 159 

charged by the chief men there, when they 
came away, not to give their consent, they 
shall not sign these articles. 

Mr. Weston is greatly offended, and tells 
them they must then " look to stand on 
their own legs." They still lack a hundred 
pounds to clear off their debts and leave the 
port. Weston will not advance a penny for 
them, but returns to London, leaving them 
to shift as they could. They sell some sixty 
or eighty firkins of their butter and raise the 
money. They also write a manly remon- 
strance to the merchants, setting forth the 
facts of the original agreement, but, as 
matter of conciliation, offering, if the part- 
nership should not prove sufficiently profit- 
able, to continue it after the seven years 
are expired. As matter of fact the articles 
are not signed for more than a year. But 
in November of the following year, moved 
somewhat perhaps by the persuasions of Mr. 
Cushman, and magnificent promises from 
Mr. Weston, (which proved to be but 



160 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 

"wind,") and probably still more by the 
wishes of their friends in Leyden, who may 
have felt that their own hopes of joining 
them depended on retaining the good will of 
the merchants, they signed the hard terms. 

When all these business arrangements 
had been dispatched, oil is poured upon the 
troubled waters by an affectionate pastoral 
letter from Mr. Robinson, which was now 
produced, and in apostolic style read to the 
whole company. 

" Loving Christian friends," it began, " I 
do heartily and in the Lord salute you all, 
as being they with whom I am present in 
my best affection and most earnest longings 
after you, though I be constrained for awhile 
to be bodily absent from you. I say con- 
strained, God knowing how willingly, and 
much rather than otherwise, I would have 
borne my part with you in this first brunt, 
were I not by strong necessity held back for 
the present. Make account of me in the 
meanwhile, as of a man divided in myself 



DELFT HAVEN. 161 

with great pain, and as (natural bonds sot 
aside) having my better part with you." 

He exhorts them as the foundation of* all 
other virtue by daily repentance to renew 
their heavenly peace with God ; then by the 
utmost watchfulness to maintain peace with 
each other ; and not alone by watchfulness 
against giving offence, but by mutual for- 
bearance against taking offence — a caution 
the more necessary, he says, both because of 
the intimate association of so many compara- 
tive strangers, and the very nature of their 
" intended course of civil community." He 
urges upon them mutual affection to carry 
on harmoniously their common interests, 
and the stern repressing of all selfishness ; 
and finally the exercise of great wisdom and 
godliness in the election of their officers, 
because " you are to have at least for the 
present only them for your ordinary govern- 
ors, whom yourselves shall make choice of 
for that work." 

14* 



162 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 

" These few things," conchides the apos- 
toKc man, " I do earnestly commend unto 
your care and conscience, joining therewith 
my daily incessant prayer unto the Lord, 
that He who hath made the heavens and the 
earth, the sea and all rivers of waters, and 
whose providence is over all His works, 
especially over all his dear children for good, 
would so guide and guard you in your ways, 
as inwardly by his Spirit, so outwardly by 
the hand of his power, that both you and 
we also, for and with you, may have after 
matter of praising His name all the days of 
your and our lives. Fare you well in Him 
in whom you trust, and in whom I rest. 

" An unfeigned well-wilier of your happy 
success in this hopeful voyage. 

"John Robinson." 

What a breathing out of Christian wisdom, 
and of true Christian hopefulness and rest. 



THE OCEAN. 163 



CHAPTER IX 



THE OCEAN 



The little company sailed out of Southamp- 
ton harbor, " scarce having any butter, no 
oil, not a sole to mend a shoe, nor every 
man a sword by his side, wanting many 
muskets, much armor" — and depending 
for future aid on a company of money- 
making men, already dissatisfied and divid- 
ed, through whose negligence they shall 
yet see famine face to face, and, but for the 
Almighty arm, shall perish. Strong only in 
God, and their own brave Christian hearts. 
It was the fifth of August. In that very 
j^p&iiih, a Dutch ma&-of-war was entering 
^/"^ James River, Virginia, and landing that ill- 
fated cargo of twenty negro slaves, which 



IGtt THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 

was the beginning of such long disaster to 
the western continent. There was the bane, 
here was the antidote. 

Other potent influences are rising or pass- 
ing away. In Enghmd Cromwell has just 
come of age, and this month he is married. 
Sir Francis Bacon, an old man of sixty years, 
has just been condemned for corruption on 
the bench, and has lain three months in the 
Tower of London, a disgraced and ruined 
man. John Milton, a boy of twelve years, 
is already beginning those midnight studies 
that impaired his sight with " drop serene ;" 
and Shakspeare has lain four years in his 
grave. On the Continent the thirty years 
war is just bursting out, in which all Eiu'ope 
is to be embroiled ; while the pusillanimous 
James, decoyed by the hope of a Spanish 
bride with two millions dower for his son, 
looks coldly on and sees his own son-in-law 
driven a beggar from the throne of Bohemia, 
and the Protestant cause depressed. 



THE OCEAN. 165 

Such was the time when the Pilgrims 
sailed. Changes have taken place among 
them since we saw them first. Age is creep- 
ing upon Brewster — he is now fifty-six years 
old ; and Mrs. Brewster is in ''a weak and 
decayed state of body." The boy Bradford 
is now a bold, sagacious man of thirty-two, 
and by his side stands his wife, Dorothy May. 
Tlie little John, whom they have so carefully 
left behind, shall never see his mother again, 
destined as she is to a watery death on the 
very coast of the promised land. There is 
the accomplished and resolute Winslow in 
the very opening of manhood, also to be a 
governor and trusty agent of the colony, — . 
and his wife Elizabeth, whose days are num- 
bered. There is the active and enterprising 
Isaac Allerton, many years the governor's 
assistant, with Mary his wife and the three 
young children so soon to be motherless. 
There is the good soldier Myles Standish, 
small of stature, but great of heart ; and she 



166 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 

of whom ill less than six months it was 
written " this day dies Rose, the wife of 
Captain Standish." There is Samuel Fuller, 
the beloved physician of the colony, as well 
as a deacon of the church, who with a pru- 
dent forecast has left both wife and child in 
Leyden. And without enumerating many 
others less prominent in position or early 
taken away, there is the good John Carver, 
a man " of singular piety and rare for 
humility," laborious and self-sacrifichig, who 
having already spent his estate in the enter- 
prise, will shorten his days in " his care and 
pains for the common good ;" and as he is 
among the oldest, so he is among the nearest 
heaven; and the loving wife, who "being 
a weak woman," will die " within five or six 
weeks after him." 

Three others at least have left their whole 
families behind, and several a portion of 
their children. Among the company are 
fourteen " servants," and several other per- 



THE OCEAN. 167 

sons whose only interest in the enterprise 
consists in their being hired for certain pur- 
poses. There are ten or twelve others 
pledged apparently by no family ties. And 
it is sad to see one group of children without 
father or mother to accompany them — Rich- 
ard and Jasper and Ellen More and their 
little brother — divided out in the families of 
Carver and Brewster and Winslow. Kinder 
homes they cannot find ; yet by another year 
Richard alone shall be living. 

Such, in part, was the company that sailed 
from Southampton. Their troubles are just 
begun. The Speedwell speeds ill. Her 
captain soon complains of a leak, and both 
vessels put back into the port of Dartmouth. 
The little vessel is thoroughly examined and 
repaired. Eight precious days, with a fair 
wind, are lost. Perhaps no better picture 
can be given of the discouragements they 
encountered from without and from the 
influence of at least one leading man within. 



168 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 

than is presented in a letter written from 
this port of Dartmouth by the officious and 
peremptory but now faint-liearted Robert 
Cuslnnan. The reader, in perusing its 
statements, will make some allowance for 
the " bundle of lead crushing his heart," 
and do him the justice to remember that 
after these few trying weeks were over, he 
continued to be, says Bradford, "a special 
instrument for their good, and to do the 
offices of a loving friend and brother." 

" Loving friend " — writes Mr. Cushman 
to Edward Southworth — " my most kind 
remembrance to you and your wife, with 
loving E. M., etc., whom in this world I 
never look to see again. For besides the 
imminent dangers of this voyage, which are 
no less than deadly, an infirmity of body 
hath seized me which will not in all likeli- 
liood leave me till death. Wliat to call it I 
know not, but it is a bundle of lead, as it 
were, crushing my heart more and more 



THE OCEAN. 169 

these fourteen days, [ever since the talk 
about " the conditions,"] so that although I 
do the actions of a living man, yet I am but 
as dead ; — but the will of God be done. 
Our pinnace will not cease leaking, else I 
think we had been half way to Virginia ; our 
voyage hither hath been as full of crosses as 
ourselves have been of crookedness. We 
put in here to trim her, and I think, as 
others also, that if we had staid but three or 
four hours more, she would have sunk right 
down. And though she was twice trimmed 
at Hampton, yet now she is open and leaky 
as a sieve ; and there was a board a man 
might have pulled off with his fingers, two 
foot long, where the water came in as at a 
mole-hole. We lay at Hampton seven days 
in fair weather, waiting for her ; and now 
we lie here waiting for her in as fair a wind 
as can blow, and so have done these four 
days and are likely to lie four more, and by 

15 



170 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 

that time the wind will haply turn as it did 
at Hampton. 

" Our victuals will be half eaten up, I 
think, before we go from the coast of Eng- 
land, and if our voyage last long, we shall 
not have a month's victuals when we come 
into the country. Near seven hundred 
pound hath been bestowed at Hampton, 
upon what I know not. Mr. Martin saith 
he neither can nor will give any account of 
it. [Martin had never been with the Pil- 
grims in Holland, but for prudential reasons, 
as lie and some of his friends were going in 
the company, had been designated with 
Carver and Cushman to lay in provisions. 
He would seem to have been a little self- 
sufficient, and perhaps Cushman's complauits 
of him are not without some reason. But 
Mr. Cushman shall tell his own story. He 
proceeds.] And if he be called on for 
accounts he crieth out of unthankfulness for 
his pains and care, that we are suspicious of 



THE OCEAN. 171 

him — and flings away, and will end nothing. 
And so he insulteth over our poor people 
with such scorn and contempt, as if they 
were not good enough to wipe his shoes. 
It would break your heart to see his dealing, 
and the mourning of our people. They 
complain to me, and alas I can do nothing 
for them. If I speak to him, he flies in my 
face as mutinous, and saith no complaints 
shall be heard but by himself, and they are 
froward and discontented and waspish and 
discontented people, and I do ill to hear 
them. [Mr. Martin probably was the " gov- 
ernor " in the Speedwell.] There are others 
that would lose all they have put in, or 
make satisfaction for what they have had, 
that they might depart, [the writer probably 
was one ;] but he will not hear them nor 
suffer them to go ashore lest they should 
run away. The sailors also are offended at 
his ignorant boldness, in meddling and con- 
trolling things he knows not what belongs 



172 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 

to, SO that some threaten to mischief him ; 
others say they will leave the ship and go 
their way. But at the best this cometh of it, 
that he makes himself a scorn and laughing- 
stock unto them. As for Mr. Weston, 
except grace do greatly sway with him, he 
will hate us ten times more than ever he 
loved us, for not confirming the conditions." 
Mr. Cushman even speaks with some 
dissatisfaction of Mr. Robinson as beino: " in 
the fault, who charged them never to con- 
sent to the conditions, nor choose me into 
office [on shipboard,] but appointed them to 
choose those they did choose ; " — on which 
statement Bradford remarks, "I think he 
(Cushman) was deceived in these things." 
Cushman — after predicting that " he (Rob- 
inson) and they will rue too late that they 
were so ignorant, yea, so inordinate in their 
courses " — returns to his complaints of Mr. 
Martin for having expended "money so 
rashly and lavishly, without knowing how 



THE OCEAN. 173 

he comes by it or on what conditions ; " and 
proceeds : 

" I told him of the alteration [of the 
articles] long ago, and he was content. But 
now he domineers and said I had betrayed 
them into the hands of slaves — he is not 
beholden to them [the merchants] — he can 
set out two ships himself to a voyage. 
Wlien, good man ? He hath but twenty 
pound in, and if he should give up his 
accounts, he would not have a penny left 
him, as I am pursuaded. [' This was found 
true afterward,' writes Bradford.] 

" Friend^ if ever lue make a plantation^ 
God works a miracle ; especially considering 
how scant we shall be of victuals and most 
of all ununited among ourselves, and devoid 
of good tutors and regiment [governors and 
government.] Violence will break all. 
Where is the meek and humble spirit of 
Moses ? and of Nehemiah, who re-edified the 
walls of Jerusalem, and the state of Israel ? 

15* 



174 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 

Is not the sound of Rehoboam's brags daily 
here among us ? Have not the philosophers 
and all wise men observed that even in 
settled comTnonwealths, violent governors 
bring either themselves or their people or 
both to ruin ? How much more in the 
raising of commonwealths, when the mortar 
is scarce yet tempered that should bind the 
walls ? 

" If I should write to you of all things 
which promiscuously forerun our ruin, I 
should overcharge my weak head and your 
tender heart; only this, prepare for evil 
tidings of us every day. But pray for us 
instantly ; it may be the Lord will be 
entreated one way or the other for us. I see 
not in reason how we shall escape even the 
gasping of hunger-starved persons ; but God 
can do much, and his will be done. It is 
better for me to die, than now for me to 
bear it, which I do daily and expect it 
hourly ; having received sentence of death, 



THE OCEAN. 175 

both within and without me. Poor WiUiam 
King and myself do strive ivlio shall he meat 
first for the fishes; but we look for a glorious 
resurrection, knowing Christ Jesus after the 
flesh no more, but looking unto the joy that 
is set before us, we will endure all these 
things and account them light in comparison 
of that joy we hope for. Remember me in 
all love to our friends as if I named them, 
whose prayers I desire earnestly and wish 
again to see, but not till I can with more 
comfort look them in the face. The Lord 
give us that true comfort which none can 
take from us. 

" I had a desire to make a brief relation 
of our estate to some friend. I doubt 
not but your wisdom will teach you sea- 
sonably to utter things as hereafter you 
shall be called to it. That which I have 
written is true, and many things more which 
I have forborne. I write it as upon my life, 
and last confession in England. What is of 



176 THE PILGRIM CHUIICH. 

use to be spoken of presently, you may speak 
of it; and what is fit to conceal, conceal. 
Pass by my weak manner ; for my head is 
weak, and my body feeble. The Lord make 
me strong in him, and keep both you and 
yours. Your loving friend, 

" Robert Cushman. 
" Dartmouth, August 17, 1620." 

Making all allowance for the coloring of 
this letter, it certainly gives a glimpse of a 
truly dismal prospect. Losing precious 
time, short of supplies, with a leaky ship, 
leading merchants disaffected, unsympathiz- 
ing governor and a grumbling crew in the 
Speedwell, a busy and talkative agent ready 
to hear if not to foment complaints, and 
prophesying certain and dismal ruin. Prob- 
ably it was well for the little band to 
undergo, as it did, a further sifting. Brave 
hearts and strong were needed for their 
work. 



THE OCEAN. 177 

Robert Ciishman was not destined to be- 
come " meat for fishes ; " he was not des- 
tined to " the gasping of hunger-starved 
persons," nor to be overwhehned by the 
" bundle of lead, as it were, crushing his 
heart." He was preserved to do good ser- 
vice yet, and to be " the right arm " of the 
colony with the merchant adventurers, and, 
some five or six years later to lay his bones 
in the mother country, as he was about 
finally to join his brethren. Deliverance to 
him was nearer probably than he thought — 
although there are obscure hints in the close 
of his letter that look towards a return. 

Again they launch. A hundred leagues 
are made, when again the Speedwell leaks 
so badly that the captain declares he must 
bear up or sink at sea. They put back to 
Plymouth, and examine the ship again. No 
special leak is found ; and indeed when the 
Speedwell was sold, she made many profita- 
ble voyages. But they determhie at length 



178 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 

to abandon the vessel on the ground of 
" general weakness." Well they may. For 
thovigh abundantly capable of " many voy- 
ages," she was incajoable of that one. It 
was pre-arranged that she should leak. The 
captain and crew understood the trick of 
having her " over-masted and too much 
pressed with sails," till the strain brought 
the water pouring in through her seams. 
They were intimidated at the fear of want, 
as the vessel was to remain, and the crew to 
stay with her for a year. So they had 
" plotted this stratagem." 

It became necessary with the smaller 
vessel to dismiss a portion of the passengers. 
Twenty persons are left, most of them 
" willing " to go back from " discontent or 
fear ; " but there were some dismissed, who, 
on account of " their own weakness and 
charge of many young children, were 
thought least useful and most unfit to bear 
the brunt of this hard adventure — unto 



THE OCEAN. 179 

wliich work of God, and judgment of their 
brethren they were contented to submit." 
Among the number wiUing to remain were 
Mr. Cushman and his family. There was 
another " sad parting," ominous of ill. The 
hospitality of friends in Plymouth, by whom 
they "were kindly entertained and cour- 
teously used," was afterwards commemo- 
rated in the name of their own American 
home. 

The stormy month of September arrived 
before they left the harbor. Besides the 
crew, one hundred and two persons, with all 
their effects and supplies, are crowded into 
that little vessel ; and a birth and a death on 
board keep their number good to the end. 
Before long, " cross winds and many fierce 
storms " overtake them. The upper works 
of the ship grow leaky, and by the severe 
shaking "one of the main beams in the 
midships is bowed and cracked." The mut- 
tering sailors express their fears; and "a 



180 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 

serious consultation" is held with the officers 
of the ship, attended with " great difference 
of opinion among the mariners themselves." 
The officers aver that the ship is " strong and 
firm under water;" and the carpenter 
promises that with a great iron screw be- 
longing to the passengers he will bring the 
beam to its place. The upper works can be 
caulked, and though with the working of 
the ship they will not long keep staunch, yet 
there would be no great danger if they did 
not over-press her with sails. So they com- 
mitted themselves to the will of God, and 
resolved to proceed " — for they were now in 
mid-ocean. Often for days together " the 
winds were so fierce and the seas so high 
that they could not bear a knot of sail." 

The tedium of the voyage is diversified, if 
not relieved, by the sallies of one profane 
and brutal sailor, who, during their sea- 
sickness, daily loaded them " with grievous 
execrations," expressing his hope " to cast 







Pilgrim Church. pp. 181. 



THE OCEAN. 181 

half of them overboard before they came to 
then- journey's end," and, if gently reproved, 
ciirsmg and swearing, bitterly. "But it 
pleased God before they came half seas over 
to smite this young man with a grievous dis- 
ease of which he died in a desperate manner, 
and so was himself the first that was thrown 
overboard," and his fellows noted it to be 
the just hand of God upon him." The 
seamen appear, on other occasions, to have 
caught the spirit of the merchant-adven- 
turers, and to have shown them little 
kindness. 

Sixty-four long days are passed, when, on 
the 9th of November they were made " not 
a little joyful " by the sight of land. It was 
Cape Cod. They are bound for the moutli 
of the Hudson. After a dangerous entan- 
glement, as they thought it, in shoals and 
breakers, they were constrained to return, 
and were next day safely moored in Cape 
Cod Harbor. And before all other proceed- 

16 



182 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 

ings, " tlicy fell down on their knees and 
blessed the Lord, the God of Heaven, who 
had brought them over the vast and furious 
ocean, and delivered them from all perils 
and miseries thereof." 



THE LAND. 183 



CHAPTER X 



THE LAND 



They knew that they had abundant cause of 
gratitude ; and so they gave thanks to God. 
But there was a vast deal more to be thank- 
ful for than they then knew — or ever knew. 
It ought never to be forgotten that the 
first settlement of New England was in its 
chief aspect a missionary enterprise. Even 
the subordinate reasons rendered, resolve 
themselves into a desire of these men to 
make the most of themselves and theirs for 
the cause of God ; while, before leaving Hol- 
land, they had themselves thus expressed 
their chief inducement: "Lastly, (and which 
was not the least,) a great hope and inward 
zeal they had of laying some good founda- 



184 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 

tion, or at least to make some way thereunto 
for propag-aling- and advancing' the gospel of 
the kingdom of Christ in those remote parts 
of the world ; yea, though they should be 
but even as stepping-stones unto others for 
the performing of so great a work." This 
motive is too repeatedly and prominently 
set forth to be for one moment mistaken. 

They never knew how wonderfully God 
was about to answer their prayer, nor unto 
what great religious results he was making 
them the " stepping-stones." Consequently 
they never saw the bearing of some of the 
chief dealings of God's providence on the 
very end they had in view. God had care- 
fully kept the land for the men. How he 
had locked up the whole continent from the 
knowledge of Europe till fifty years after the 
discovery of printing, and on the eye of the 
great Reformation. And how carefully then 
he had shut it up from all attempts at per- 
manent colonization till the ripest fruits of 



THE LAND. 185 

the Reformation had been gathered. For 
more than a hundred years after its dis- 
covery, no European was suffered to get a 
foothold in North America. There were 
attempts enough. For two-thirds of a cen- 
tury the monarchy of France and the chiv- 
alry of Spain had vainly sought to establish 
permanent colonies in the country. God 
kept the land for the hour and the men. 

The men — the first permanent colonists 
of North America — ^liad already been chosen 
from that nation of all Europe, in which on 
the whole the rights of man had made the 
highest progress, and the claims of God were 
best understood. 

And now the fathers of New England had 
been taken from the best, the Puritan, party 
of that nation ; and even of that party, these 
were the men most thoroughly sifted and 
tried and trained. They were sent from 
England when the British mind was in the 
very bloom and flush of strength — when 

16* 



186 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 

Shakspeare, Bacon, Raleigh, Hampden, 
Cromwell, UU were living. They were sent 
by Holland to chasten their spirits and 
broaden their views. They were sent 
through opposition, hardship, and poverty, 
to keep them from being overrun by worth- 
less adventurers, and were long hedged 
round by a wall of suffering to work out 
their grand experiment unmolested. A pro- 
miscuous rush of colonists in their train 
might have changed the destinies of New 
England — and of how much else ? Lideed, 
the Omniscient Eye carefully watched the 
whole course of events ; in a quarter of a 
century God suffered but about 21,000 men 
to follow them — men chiefly of kindred 
mind — and then by his wise providence he 
shut off the stream of emigration. 

God had led them not only by a way, but 
to a place they knew not. They were look- 
ing much further south — at least to the 
mouth of the Hudson. They were brought 



THE LAND. 187 

to a better place for them — where there 
should be none to dispute possession, and 
where they and theirs might long remain 
undisturbed, a peculiar people. Perhaps 
they had reason to be thankful that God 
brought them to one of the barrenest por- 
tions of the continent. How much the 
virtue of their descendants has clung to that 
barren soil — or how the whole future of the 
great Puritan family would have been 
changed had the forefathers fallen upon 
some luxuriant Guiana or Florida — who but 
God can tell. 

And as God led them to that spot, how 
carefully had he cleared the place — though 
they knew it not. He had left the savages 
to subdue the wild beasts of the forest, till 
about three years before, and then by a 
terrible pestilence that almost annihilated 
some of the tribes, he had nearly cleared 
that whole coast of the enemies that not only 
might, but doubtless would have devoured 



188 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 

them in their feeble state. There were 
times when even the feeble remnant could 
have crushed them as they would an infant. 
In the spot soon fixed upon for the colony, 
the plague had left " not one man, woman or 
child remaining." All the delays and diffi- 
culties of the embarkation, and cross-winds 
of the voyage, had been needful to bring 
them to this place. Had they made an 
earlier arrival, they would have gone to the 
southward. Necessity brought them here. 

Notwithstanding they knew not or con- 
sidered not all these things, these men felt 
that they had abundant reason for gratitude. 
And they gave hearty thanks ; for no men 
ever more thoroughly acknowledged the 
daily providential hand of God. 

And yet if they rejoiced in God, it was 
not without the deepest sense of their for- 
lorn condition. Here is the picture drawn 
long afterwards by one of those very men : 
" Here I cannot but stay and make a pause 



THE LAND. 189 

and stand half amazed at these poor people's 
condition. For having passed through 
many troubles both before and upon the 
voyage, as aforesaid, they had now no 
friends to welcome them, nor inns to enter- 
tain and refresh them, no houses, much less 
towns to repair unto to seek for succor. It 
is recorded in Scripture as a mercy to the 
apostle ajid his ship-wrecked company that 
' the barbarians showed them no small kind- 
ness ' in refreshing them. But these savage 
barbarians, when they met with them, were 
readier to fill their sides full of arrows, than 
otherwise. And for the season, it was 
winter ; and they that know the winters of 
that country, know them to be sharp and 
violent and subject to violent storms, dan- 
gerous to travel to known places, much 
more to search out unknown coasts. Be- 
sides, what could they see, but a hideous 
and desolate wilderness full of wild beasts 
and wild men ? and what multitudes there 



190 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 

might be of them they knew not. Neither 
could they, as it were, go up to the top of 
Pisgah, to view from this wilderness a more 
goodly country to feed their hopes. For 
which way soever they turned their eyes, 
save upward to the heavens^ they could have 
little solace or content in respect to any 
outward objects. For, summer being done, 
all things stand for them to view with a 
weather-beaten face ; and the whole country 
being full of woods and thickets, presented a 
wild and savage hue. If they looked behind 
them there was the mighty ocean which 
they had passed, and was now a main bar 
and gulf to separate them from all the civil 
[civilized] parts of the world. If it be said 
they had a ship to succor them — it is true ; 
but what heard they daily from the master 
and company but that with speed they 
should look out a place for their shallop, 
where they would be at some near distance ; 
for the season was such that he would not 



THE LAND. 191 

stir from thence until a safe harbor was dis- 
covered by them, where they would be, and 
he might go without danger ; and that 
victuals consumed apace, but he must and 
would keep sufficient for himself and company 
for their return. Yea, it was muttered by 
some, that if they got not a place in time, 
they [the ship's crew] would turn them and 
their goods on shore dnd leave them. Let it 
also be considered what weak hopes of sup- 
ply and succor they left behind them, that 
might bear up their minds in this sad con- 
dition, and the trials they were under. It is 
true, indeed, the affection and love of their 
brethren at Leyden were cordial and entire ; 
but they had little power to help them, or 
themselves ; and how the case stood between 
them and the merchants at their coming 
away, hath already been declared. What 
could now sustain them but the Spirit of 
God and his grace ? " 



192 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 

It would seem as though little could be 
added to the desolateness of the picture : a 
feeble company, scantily supplied with pro- 
visions, on a wilderness shore, in the open- 
ing of winter; none but hostile savages to 
receive them; a threatening crew pressing 
them to land ; not a shelter ready nor even a 
site selected for their home ; the captain 
refusing to move his vessel from her moor- 
ings, and their exploring " shallop " requir- 
ing a fortnight's precious time to repair ; 
with not a sympathetic heart except the 
band almost as helpless as themselves, across 
the water — lying at the mercy of an unsym- 
pathizing, disaffected corporation. But still 
one other thing is added : faction in their 
own little number. Few as they were, 
there was discordant material among them. 
There were " strangers " who had joined 
them in England, some of them employed 
for hire, and one or two surreptitiously 
crowded m by friends in England. These 



THE LAND. 193 

men had dropped " discontented and muti- 
nous speeches," declaring that as the patent 
was for Yirginia and not for New England, 
and consequently they were beyond its 
reach, "none had power to command them," 
and " when they came on shore they would 
use their own liberty." 

Troubles were thick. But these were not 
the men to lie still in despair. They took 
each thing in its order. First the faction 
was silenced. For this purpose, before any 
foot pressed the shore, that famous " com- 
pact" was drawn, which, avowing that they 
have imdertaken to plant a colony " for the 
glory of God and the advancement of the 
Christian faith, and the honor of our king 
and country," binds them together as " a 
civil body politic" to enact "just and equal 
laws" "for the general good," to which they 
" promise all due submission and obedi- 
ence." This document, equally remarkable 
for its declaration of their religious purpose, 

17 



194 "THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 

and its utterance, in the fewest words, of the 
very essence of a republican government, 
was signed by forty-one names — the adult 
male members of the company. John 
Carver is chosen Governor. 

Now for work. The shallop is hauled out 
for an exploring trip ; unfortunately she 
needs sixteen days' work in repairing. No 
time is to be lost. A band of sixteen men, 
with Standish at their head, set forth by 
land. The women hasten ashore to do their 
washing. But, alas, at every passage from 
the ship to the land in that shallow water, 
there is a long way to wade, and many a 
death-cold is thus early taken. 

We do not propose to follow all the inci- 
dents of their daily toils. 

The most noticeable things which the 
exploring party saw were the numerous 
graves that marked, although they knew it 
not, the late terrible mortality. The first 
welcome to their new land was a shower of 



THE LAND. 195 

arrows that came rattling around their 
camp-fire one morning at day-break. At 
five o'clock that morning they had already 
held their morning prayers, in haste for an 
early departure ; but they pause after the 
attack to " give God solemn thanks and 
praise for their deliverance," not a man 
being hit or hurt, though several of their 
coats that hung on the wall of the enclosure 
were " shot through and through." The 
savages had aimed at some of the chief men 
of the colony. The special providence of 
God, as they felt it to be, directed them to a 
large quantity of buried Indian corn. They 
took it, with the settled purpose of making 
" large satisfaction " to the owner, whenever 
he could be found ; and it was their sole 
supply of seed-corn for the year ensuing. 
But for this, says Bradford, " they might 
have starved." The Lord, he adds, ^'is 
never wanting unto his in their greatest 
needs ; let his holy nan^e have all the 



196 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 

praise.'' They afterwards paid the Indians 
what the savages deemed double the value 
of the corn. 

From the time of the encounter with the 
Indians they proceed only in the shallop. 
Fifteen leagues they coast along, but find no 
harbor. A storm of sleet and rain comes 
on — the wind is high and the sea is rough. 
With a broken rudder they press all sail to 
gain an expected shelter, when the mast 
breaks, the sail goes overboard, and they 
narrowly, " by God's mercy," escape being 
cast away — Carver, and Bradford, and Wins- 
low and Standish among them. Again they 
barely miss being wrecked in the breakers ; 
and in deep darkness and a pitiless rain they 
run under a lee shore. Fear of the In- 
dians warned them to spend the night upon 
the boat. But human nature could hold out 
no longer. Many of them were so weak 
and cold that they hurried on shore and 
with much difficulty lighted a fire ; and the 



THE LAND. 197 

whole company followed. " God gave them 
a morning of comfort and refreshing." The 
sun shone out clear and frosty. They found 
themselves secure upon an island — Clark's 
Island — at the entrance of the beautiful 
harbor of Plymouth. The day is devoted to 
resting their weary frames, drying their 
effects, putting their arms in order, and 
giving " God thanks for his mercies in their 
manifold deliverances." The following day 
was the Sabbath. But though they were all 
rested, and their errand most pressing, and 
their friends anxiously waiting for their 
return, not a foot moved on its way. Tliey 
kept holy the day of the Lord. Upon the 
strict piety that thus loved the duties of the 
sacred Sabbath and reverenced God and his 
ordinances, depended the character of New 
England. 

On Monday the 11th of December, (the 
memorable 22d, new style, as it is now 

17* 



198 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 

reckoned — though it should be the 21st,) 
they landed on Plymouth Rock. They 
sounded the harbor and marched into the 
land, till they were satisfied they had found 
the place for their home ; then hurried back 
to " comfort the hearts " of their friends. 
There was one heart among themselves that 
needed comfort : the loving wife who should 
have welcomed William Bradford back, met 
him no more — she had been drowned in his 
absence. 

In a few days more, (on Saturday the 
16th,) the Mayflower rides at anchor in the 
new-found harbor. Again the holy Sabbath 
intervenes, and fills their hearts with peace 
and courage and strength for the morrow. 
Monday and Tuesday are spent in exploring 
the region to fix on a village site. There is 
no time to lose in search or deliberation, 
" our victuals being much spent.'* Two 
places arc in question. So on Wednesday 



THE LAND. 199 

morning " after we had called on God for 
direction,'* we " go ashore again " and fix 
upon a site " on a high ground, where there 
is a great deal of land cleared, and that hath 
been planted with corn three or four years 
ago ; and there is a very sweet brook runs 
under the hill side, and many delicate 
springs of as good water as can be drunk, 
and where we may harbor our shallops and 
boats exceeding well ; and in this brook much 
good fish in their seasons; on the further 
side of the river also much corn-ground 
cleared. In one field is a great hill on 
which we point [appoint] to make a plat- 
form and plant our ordnance [cannon] 
which will command all about. From 
thence we may see 'into the bay, and far 
into the sea ; and we may see thence Cape 
Cod. Our greatest labor will be the fetch- 
ing of our wood, which is half a quarter of 
an English mile. What people inhabit here 



200 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 

we know not, for as yet we have seen none. 
So there we made our rendezvous, resolving 
in the morning to come all ashore and build 
houses." 
That was Plymouth. 



HOME. 201 



CHAPTER XI. 

HOME. 

But the next day it rained and blew tem- 
pestuously — and the next also. In the 
midst of the storm the birth of a dead son 
to Isaac Allerton sadly inaugurates the 
founding of a new home. 

When the storm clears off, all hands are 
on shore, " some to fell timber, some to saw, 
some to rive, and some to carry ; so no man 
rested that day." Many of them, too, were 
men who had seldom done such work. 
Amid the "frost and foul weather" of mid- 
winter, so hindering them that they could 
" seldom work half the week," Leyden 
Street is lined with its " common-house " 
twenty feet square, and its little row of 



202 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 

dwellings packed snugly by each other's side 
for mutual security. Nineteen dwellmgs 
seem to have been in tlicir plan, but when 
the Spring came they had built, and they 
required, not half the number. In less than 
one month from the day when the first tree 
fell, they hold their Sabbath worship on the 
shore. The work goes on under great diffi- 
culties. John Goodman wanders away and 
freezes his feet. William Bradford, by 
reason of his late exposures, is " vehemently 
seized with grief and pain " which " so shot 
to his huckle-bone, [hip-bone,] it was doubted 
he would have died instantly." The thatched 
roof takes fire when Carver and Bradford 
lie sick among loaded muskets, and their 
lives are endangered ; but " through God's 
mercy they had no harm." A furious storm 
washes out the clay mortar with which the 
crevices of their log-houses are filled. 
Again the thatch of their sick-house takes 
fire, but no harm is done. 




Pilgrim Church pp. 203. 



HOME. 203 

And all the while, there are glimpses 
and sounds of savages flitting ghostlike 
round them in the distance, and filling them 
with apprehensions ; till at length one " fair 
warm day" in March, Samoset marches 
boldly through the village to the very ren- 
dezvous where the men are perfecting their 
military organization, and loudly bids them 
" welcome." It is the beginning of a firm 
and lasting peace with the neighboring 
Indians ; and Squanto, sole known survivor 
of those who once tilled the corn-lands of 
Plymouth, teaches them how to plant their 
fields. 

But long before the young blade is up, 
the Reaper whose name is death, had thrust 
in his sickle ; and before the month of No- 
vember came roimd, fifty-one of the one-hun- 
dred-and-two lay beneath the turf. Hard- 
ship and exposure did their work, indeed, 
chiefly before the end of March. The whole 
family of Mr. Martin became extinct. Pris- 



204 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 

cilia Molines is the only survivor of her 
father's house. John Turner and his two 
sons, Thomas Tinker with his wife and only 
child, John and Edward Tillie and their 
wives, John Rigdale and wife, James Chil- 
ton and wife, Edward Fuller and wife, the 
noble John Carver and his wife, and three 
of the four orphan children were cut down. 
Mrs. Wliite was written a widow ; and the 
wives of Standish, Bradford, Winslow, AUer- 
ton, and Francis Eaton had finished their 
brief course. In the time of greatest dis- 
tress, Brewster and Standish and five other 
individuals alone were well enough to wait 
upon the rest. "The Lord upheld these 
persons " while they " spared no pains night 
or day, but with abundance of toil and 
hazard of their own health, fetched them 
wood, made them fires, dressed them meat, 
made their beds, washed their loathsome 
clothes, clothed and unclothed them, in a 
word did all homely and necessary offices 



HOME. 2(>5 

for them, and all this willingly and cheer- 
fully, without any grudging in the least, 
showing herein their true love unto their 
friends and brethren." 

Meanwhile a very different scene was 
taking place on ship-board. When the sick- 
ness began on the land, one of the sufferers 
— Bradford himself — had desired "a small 
can of beer " from the supply on board, but 
had received answer from "the master" that 
" if he were his own father he should have 
none." But before the vessel was ready to 
sail the disease broke out among the crew. 
And now for the spirit of selfishness. These 
" boon companions in drinking and jollity " 
dreading infection, " began now to desert 
one another in this calamity, saying they 
would not hazard their lives for them by 
coming to help them in their cabins, but if 
they died, let them die." But the passen- 
gers showed them the kindness and atten- 
tion which they could not gain from their 

18 



206 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 

own friends, and melted some of their selfish 
hearts. Among others, the boatswain, who 
had often scoffed and cursed at the passen- 
gers, confessed that " he did not deserve this 
at their hands — he had abused them in word 
and deed." " ! " exclaimed he, " you 
show your love like Christians indeed to one 
another, but we let one another lie and die 
like dogs." The poor fellow died, and with 
him about half the crew. The dead were 
buried on the bank that overhangs the 
landing. 

It is a sad picture of the weakness of the 
colony, that, fearing lest the Indians should 
learn their prostrate condition, the graves 
on the bank were levelled that spring, and 
the ground above was sown with grain. 
Human bones have been repeatedly washed 
from the bank ; and in the summer of 1855, 
wlien a drain was dug through the spot, the 
remains of several human beings were found 
and deposited, as sacred dust, on " Burial 



HOME. 207 

Hill.'* u Ti^e spring advancing, it pleases 
God the mortality begins to cease, and the 
sick and lame recover." It " puts new life 
into the people." On the fifth of April the 
Mayflower left the harbor on her homeward 
voyage ; but though many a watery eye 
must have watched her till she was lost to 
the sight, not one of the survivors aban- 
doned the place now hallowed by suffering. 
"It was the Lord which upheld them," 
writes one who was himself brought low 
with sickness, " and had beforehand pre- 
pared them; many having long borne the 
yoke, yea, from their youth." It was a 
special mercy to the little colony that, with 
the exception of Mr. Carver, all the leading 
men were spared. Had even five or six of 
the more responsible members been cut off, 
what might have been the issue, none but 
He who ordered all, can tell. 

As the autumn came on, it found them in 
plenty ; with a good crop, a successful 



208 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 

beaver-trade, abundance of fish, and a supply 
of water fowls and wild turkeys. " And 
thus," say they, " they found the Lord to be 
with them in all their ways, and to bless 
their outgoings and their incomings, for 
which let his holy name have the praise 
forever, to all posterity." 

So, "our harvest being gotten in, 
[twenty acres of Indian corn, and six acres 
of barley and peas,] our governor sent 
four men on fowling, that so we might after 
a special manner rejoice together after we 
had gathered the fruit of our labors. They 
four in one day killed as many fowl as, with 
a little help beside, served the company 
almost a week. At which tune, among 
other recreations, we exercised our arms, 
many of the Lidians coming among us, and 
among the rest their greatest king, Massa- 
soit, with some ninety men, whom for three 
days we entertained and feasted ; and they 
went out and killed five deer, which they 



HOME. 209 

brought to the plantation, and bestowed on 
our governor, and upon the captain and 
others. And although it be not always so 
plentiful as it was at this time with us, yet 
by the goodness of God, we are so far from 
want, that we often wish you, [our distant 
friends,] partakers of our plenty." 

Thus wrote Winslow to his friend Morton 
in December, 1621. But his exultant words 
were a little premature. The plenty was 
diminishing before the letter was sent. The 
ship Fortune, by which it was dispatched, 
had brought thirty-six more colonists and no 
supplies — " not so much as a biscuit-cake or 
any other victuals for them ; neither had 
they any bedding but some sorry things they 
had in their cabins, nor pot, nor pan, nor 
any thing to dress their meat in ; nor over- 
many clothes, for many of them had brushed 
away their coats and cloaks at Plymouth as 
they came." However, they were mostly 
able-bodied young men ; and ^'the plantation 

18* 



210 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 

was glad of this addition to tlicir strength." 
An almost double number of consumers 
makes a speedy difference in the provisions ; 
and the Governor is obliged to put all on 
half allowance with the prospect at that rate 
of only six months' supply. 

The Fortune also brought a harsh letter 
from Mr. Weston, complaining of the trans- 
actions before they sailed, and chiding them 
because, in the labors and sickness of the 
winter, they had been unable to lade the 
Mayflower with a valuable freight. He had 
learned, of course, from the crew of the ship 
the prostrate condition of the colony, yet he 
sees fit to address Governor Carver in the 
following style : "That you sent no lading in 
the ship is wonderful and worthily distasted. 
I know your weakness was the cause of it, 
and I believe more weakness of judgment 
than weakness of hands. A quarter of the 
time you spent in discoursing, arguing and 
consulting, would have done much more." 



HOME. 211 

Aiid he goes on to assure them that if they 
will sign "the conditions" and send a good 
lading in this ship, to requite his expendi- 
tures and encourage the company, he " ivill 
never quit the business though all the other 
adventurers should.^^ 

They freighted back the Fortune " with 
good clapboard as full as she could stow, 
and two hogshead of beaver and otter 
skins ; " the whole lading being valued at 
five hundred pounds. But as to Mr. Wes- 
ton's valiant assurances, " all proved but 
wind," says Bradford, " for he was the first 
and only man that forsook them, and that 
before he so much as heard of the return of 
the ship or knew what was done ; so vain is 
the confidence in man." 

To Mr. Weston's complaints. Governor 
Bradford writes in a manly and touching 
strain — with a single burst of honest indig- 
nation. The last sentence of the extract is 
one of the indications that even into their 



212 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 

little number there had crept individuals 
with whom they had nothing in common. 
The Billington family, for example, had 
"been shuffled into their company" by 
friends in London. The father was a pro- 
fane and troublesome " knave," who, after 
causing continual annoyance to the colony, 
ten years later was hung for murder. But 
to the letter of Bradford to Weston : — 

" Sir : Your large letter written to Mr. 
Carver I have received, wherein (after the 
apology made for yourself) you lay many 
heavy imputations upon him and upon us 
all. Touching him, he is departed this life, 
and is now at rest in the Lord from all those 
troubles and incumbrances with which we 
are yet to strive. He needs not my apology ; 
for his care and pains were so great for the 
common good, both ours and yours, that 
therewith, it is thought, he oppressed him- 
self and shortened his days ; of whose loss 



HOME. 213 

we cannot sufficiently complain [deplore]. 
At great charges in this adventure, I confess 
you have been, and many losses may sustain ; 
but the loss of his and many other honest 
and industrious men's lives cannot be valued 
at any price. Of the one there may be 
hope of recovery, but the other no recom- 
pense can make good. But I will not insist 
on generals, but will come now to particulars. 
" You greatly blame us for keeping the 
ship so long in the country, and then to send 
her away empty. She lay five weeks at 
Cape Cod, while with many a weary step and 
the endurance of many a hard brunt, we 
sought out in the foul winter a place of 
habitation. Then we went in so tedious a 
time to make provision to shelter us and our 
goods, about which labor many of our arms 
and legs can tell us to this day we were not 
negligent. But it pleased God to visit us 
then with death daily, and with so general a 
disease that the living were scarce able to 



214 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 

bury the dead, and the well not in any 
measure sufficient to tend the sick. And 
now to be so greatly blamed for not freight- 
ing the ship, doth indeed go near us and 
much discourage us. But you say you 
know we will pretend weakness ; and do you 
think we had not cause ? Yes, you tell us 
you believe it, but it was more weakness of 
judgment than of hands. Our weakness 
herein is great, we confess, therefore we will 
bear this check patiently till God send us 
wiser men. But they which told you we 
spent so much time in discoursing and con- 
sulting, <fec., their hearts can tell their 
tongues, they lie. They cared not, so they 
might salve their own sores, how they 
wounded others. Indeed, it is our calamity 
that we are (beyond expectation) yoked 
with some ill-conditioned people who will 
never do good, but corrupt and abuse 
others." 



HOME. 215 

111 the same letter the Governor informs 
him that they have at length signed the 
articles ; exhibits the condition of affairs, 
and apprises him distinctly that unless they 
had supplies in due time the addition to 
their numbers must "unavoidably bring 
famine upon them." 

Hardly had the vessel sailed and the com- 
pany been put on short allowance, when the 
Narraganset tribe of Indians, covering the 
wliole State of Rhode Island and numbering 
thirty tliousand, offended at their friendly 
relations to certain other tribes, sent them a 
messenger with a bundle of arrows tied with 
a snake-skin. The Governor of this little 
band of eighty-seven men, women and chil- 
dren, by advice of others, " sent a round 
answer" to the tribe that mustered five 
thousand warriors, " that if they rather have 
war than peace they might begin when they 
would ; they had done them no wrong, 
neither did they fear them." He also sent 



216 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 

back the skin of the rattle-snake, stuffed 
with powder and balls. But the colony at 
once surround their dwellings with a strong 
stockade, with gates that were shut and 
guarded every night ; and their military 
organization was arranged anew by Captain 
Standish. The Narragansets, however, had 
a mysterious horror of powder and ball. So 
when the snake-skin came back, Canonicus 
the chief would not touch it nor leave it in 
his wigwam, but ordered the messenger to 
take it home. On his refusal, it was passed 
from hand to hand till it reached the settle- 
ment again. The sight of gunpowder did 
the business, and the Narragansets kept 
their distance. 

In these anxieties in their relations to the 
savages and the merchants, the Governor 
was not without his grave joke. On Christ- 
mas day he summoned the people to their 
toil as usual — ^for Christmas day they held 
in no esteem. But most of the new-comers, 



HOME. 217 

who seem to have been direct from England, 
" excused themselves, and said it went 
against their consciences to work on that 
day. So the Governor told them that if they 
made it matter of conscience he would spare 
them till they were better informed. And 
he led away the rest and left them. But 
when they came home from their work at 
noon he found them in the street at play 
openly, some pitching the bar, some at stool- 
ball, and such like sports. So he went to 
them, and took away their implements, and 
told them that was against his conscience 
that they should play and others work. If 
they made the keeping of it matter of devo- 
tion, let them keep their houses, but there 
should be no gaming or revelling in the 
streets." 

The second season wore away. The sup- 
plies for which they looked did not come. 
Instead of aid came a fishing vessel of Mr. 
Weston, sent out on his own account, and 

19 



218 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 

letters from him, first advising them to 
break their compact with the merchants, 
afterwards informing them that he had quit 
the company. Letters from Cushman and 
three other individuals inform them, more- 
over, that Mr. Weston is about sending a 
colony of his into their neighborhood, imder 
the charge of Weston's brother, " a heady 
young man and violent, and set against you 
there," and that the most of his colony are 
'»' not fit for an honest man's company." 
Mr. Weston himself admits in one of his 
letters that they are " rude fellows," but he 
hopes " not only to be able to reclaim them 
from that profaneness that may scandalize 
the voyage, but by degrees to draw them to 
God, &c." He asks the Plymouth men to 
give them entertainment. 

They were greatly at a loss what to do — 
advised as they were by their friends in 
England in the strongest terms to have 
nothing to do with this rude company, both 



HOME. 219 

for their own sakes and anticipated trouble 
with the Indians which such a set of men 
must produce. But they concluded to give 
them friendly entertainment, partly in con- 
sideration of their earlier relations to Mr. 
Weston, and partly in compassion to the 
strangers themselves, thrown otherwise 
friendless on the coast, though with abun- 
dant supplies. So they endured them 
through the summer — though the new- 
comers meanly stole the green corn and 
impaired the harvest ; — and they took care 
of their sick for some time after the 
departure of the new colony to Weymouth. 
These " rude fellows " — to follow their his- 
tory a little — in a few months squandered 
their abundant supplies, and came to utter 
destitution. They sold even their clothing 
and bedding to the Indians, became their 
servants, cutting wood and bringing water 
" for a cap full of corn," and at length 
resorted to stealing. Notwithstanding every 



220 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 

device, many of them perished with cold and 
hunger. As they wandered on the shore 
hunting for clams and ground nuts, one of 
them was so weak that he stuck fast in the 
mud, and was found lying dead. They 
embroiled themselves with the Lidians, ac- 
cording to the predictions of all who knew 
them ; and a plot was formed by the savages 
to destroy them and the Plymouth colony 
too. The great kindness of the Plymouth 
men to the chief, Massasoit, who by Wins- 
low's medical aid and nursing was restored 
from what was supposed to be a fatal sick- 
ness, induced the chieftain to disclose to 
them the plot, on the eve of its execution. 

After a careful weighing of the case, 
Standish was dispatched with a company of 
eight men to the Massachusetts tribe, where 
by a prompt and daring vengeance inflicted 
on three of the chief conspirators who had 
already began to whet their knives with 
insulting threats in his presence, he struck 



HOME. 221 

terror into the hearts of all. A few other 
Indians were slain. This was the only rup- 
ture of their peace with the savages m that 
generation ; and for this other men were 
responsible. For this, the kindly Robinson 
wrote them a letter of warm remonstrance ; 
but the colonists themselves were so per- 
suaded that their existence hung upon the 
course they .followed, that they record their 
special occasion for rendering " honor, praise, 
and glory to God for preserving us from 
falling when we were at the pit's brim, 
and feared nor knew not that we were in 
danger." 

The poor discouraged remnants of Mr. 
Weston'^ colony took ship and sailed away, 
hoping to find friends and supplies at the 
fishing stations off the coast ; while Standish 
furnished them "all the corn he could, 
scarce leaving him any to bring home ; saw 
them well out of the bay under sail at sea, 
and so came home, not taking the worth of 

19* 



222 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 

a penny of any thing that was theirs." 
Such was the miserable end of the party, 
" all able, lusty men," who came in their 
pride and strength, boasting of their superi- 
ority to the Plymouth company with their 
" many women and children and weak ones 
among them." " But a man's way," says 
Bradford, " is not in his own power : God 
can make the weak to stand ; let him that 
standeth take heed lest he fall." 

Not long after there came an unexpected 
visitor among them. He had come from 
England in a fishing vessel, disguised as a 
blacksmith, had been cast aAvay near Ports- 
mouth, been stripped by the Indians of 
every article of clothing even to liis shirt, 
and had borrowed clothes to come to 
Plymouth. It was Thomas Weston, the 
once rich London merchant, who had come 
to the country only to hear of the ruin and 
dissolution of his colony, and to sue for 
kindness at the hands of this feeble band. 



HOME. 223 

In their own straitened circumstances, they 
" remembered former courtesies," yielded to 
his urgent entreaties, and furnished him 
with beaver skins enough to set him up in 
trade again. They afterwards befriended 
him when there was a warrant out for his 
arrest for violatmg the rights of what was 
called the Plymouth Company in England, 
and the Governor even became his bail. 
But it is sad to relate that Mr. Weston 
" proved a bitter enemy to them on all occa- 
sions, and never repaid them any thing for 
it but reproaches and evil words." It does 
not appear that he ever regained his wealth, 
but lived as a needy adventurer, and died at 
Bristol, England, " in the time of the wars." 
His exasperation is unaccountable, except as 
the fruit of bitter pecuniary disappointment 
acting on a hot and impulsive nature, 
already conscious of deserved blame. But 
the objects of his dislike have left on record 



224 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 

truly, that " they helped him, when all the 
world failed him." 

A more faithful heart had ceased to beat 
but just before. The trusty Squanto, sole 
survivor of the aboriginal occupants of 
Plymouth, fell sick and died, " desiring the 
Governor to pray for him, that he might go 
to the Englishman's God in heaven," and 
bequeathing to his English friends various 
" remembrances of his love." 



FAST AND THANKSGIVING. 225 



CHAPTER XII. 

FAST AND THANKSGIVING. 

The crisis was yet to come. Before the 
troubles about the Weymouth Colony and 
with the Indians were settled, the spring of 
1623 had arrived. No supplies had been 
received. The new comers had been pro- 
vided, and even the ship in which they came 
had been partly supplied for the home 
voyage. The Weymouth men had helped 
exhaust their provisions, and had wasted 
their growing crops. With the utmost diffi- 
culty the company had worried through till 
planting time. Small quantities of Indian 
corn had been procured of the natives along 
the coast, indeed all that could be spared ; 
for the Indians previous to the use of 
English hoes, planted but little. 



22G THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 

April came. It was evident that extraor- 
dinary measures must be taken to increase 
the ensuing harvest. Thej had learned to 
prize Indian corn "as more precious than 
silver." The experiment of laboring for the 
common stock, though tried by some of the 
best men in the world under the spur of 
necessity, failed to develop the best exer- 
tions. The strong man felt it an injustice 
to receive no more than the weaker or more 
indolent who did not half so much work. 
The more venerable members of the commu- 
nity felt it an indignity to be placed in their 
labors, food and clothing, on a level " with 
the meaner and younger sort." The young 
men repined " that they should spend their 
time and strength to work for other men's 
wives and children without any recom- 
pense ; " while " for men's wives to be com- 
manded to do service for other men, dressino* 
their meat, washing their clothes, etc., they 
deemed it a kind of slavery, neither could 



FAST AND THANKSGIVING. 227 

many husbands well brook it." The whole 
system, forced upon them against their will, 
was felt to be a grievance and a source of 
evil, and " it would have been worse if they 
had been men of a different character." 
"Let none object," says Bradford, "that this 
is men's corruption, and nothing to the 
course itself. I answer seeing all men have 
this corruption in them, God in his wisdom 
saw another fitter course for them." He 
might have added that God himself im- 
planted the desire of possession and 
ordained the law of property : " Thou slialt 
not steal — thou shalt not covet." 

To meet the impending exigency and 
apply the utmost stimulus to exertion, it was 
resolved that this year every man should 
plant for himself. It made all hands indus- 
trious. The very women might have been 
seen in the field, and their children with 
them, planting corn. The largest possible 
quantity was planted. But by this time all 



228 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 

their provisions " were spent, and they were 
to rest only on God's providence, at night 
not many times knowing where to have a bit 
of any thing next day. Above the people in 
the world," said one of them, "they had 
need to pray that God would give them 
their daily bread." And " they bore these 
wants," we are also told, " with great 
patience and alacrity of spirit." 

For three months they had no bread nor 
any kind of grain. When the planting was 
passed, their solitary boat was sent out with 
the nets for fish, and, by relays of men, kept 
going all the time. Sometimes it was five or 
six days before she returned. When the 
boat was long in coming or her supply inad- 
equate, all hands resorted to the sea-side at 
low-water, and dug for shell-fish in the 
sands ; while two of the best hunters ranged 
the woods and brought them now and then 
a deer. During the winter previous they 



PAST AND THANKSGIVING. 229 

had been partly relieved by ground nuts and 
wild fowls. 

Every hope was now centered in the 
young crop. The corn was well planted, 
according to the Indian method, with two or 
three fishes in every hill. It came up well. 
But, alas, from the third week of May for 
six long weeks the intense heat of summer 
was tempered with scarcely a drop of rain. 
The drought was most alarming. The ear- 
lier crop of maize began to send out the ear 
before the plant was half grown ; and that 
of the later planting hung down both blade 
and stalk, changing its color till it seemed, 
and some of it proved to be dead. " Our 
beans also ran not up according to their 
wonted manner, but stood at a stay, many 
being parched away as though they had been 
scorched before the fire. Now were our 
hopes overthrown, and we discouraged — our 
joy being turned into mourning." 

20 



230 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 

To add to their distress, they hear that a 
supply which had been sent from England 
had been twice driven back by the weather, 
and the vessel, having afterwards been seen 
at sea, for three months had not been heard 
from ; only the signs of a wreck had been 
found on the coast. " At once God seemed 
to deprive us of all future hopes. The most 
courageous were now discouraged because 
God which had hitherto been our only shield 
and supporter, now seemed in his anger to 
arm himself against us." 

Every good man is moved " to enter into 
examination of his own estate between God 
and his conscience ; " and the whole com- 
pany determine " solemnly to humble our- 
selves together before the Lord by fasting 
and prayer." To that end a day was ap- 
pointed by public authority, and set apart 
from all other emjDloyments ; hoping that 
the same God which had stirred us up here- 
unto, would be moved in mercy to look down 



PAST AND THANKSGIVING. 231 

upon US, and grant the request of our de- 
jected souls, if our continuance there might 
any way stand with his glory and our good. 

" But, 0, the mercy of our God ! who was 
as ready to hear as we to ask ; for though in 
the morning when we assembled together 
the heavens were as clear, and the drought 
as like to continue, as ever it was, yet — our 
exercise continuing some eight or nine 
hours — before our departure, the weather 
was overcast, the • clouds gathered on all 
sides, and on the next morning distilled 
such soft, sweet, and moderate showers of 
rain, continuing some fourteen days, that it 
was hard to say whether our withered corn 
or our drooping affections were most quick- 
ened or revived. Such was the bounty and 
goodness of our God." To the above narra- 
tive by Winslow, Bradford adds that the rain 
" came without either wind or thunder, or 
any violence, and by degrees in abundance, 
so that the earth was thoroughly wet and 



232 TEE PILGRIM CHURCH. 

soaked therewith. Which did so apparently 
revive and quicken the decayed corn and 
other fruits as was wonderful to see, and 
made the Indians astonished to behold ; and 
afterwards the Lord sent them such season- 
able showers, with interchange of fair warm 
weather, as through his blessing caused a 
fruitful and liberal harvest to their no small 
comfort and rejoicing." 

Three or four weeks after this time of 
anguish and rejoicing, two vessels arrived — 
the Anne and the Little James — bringing 
about sixty passengers. Among them were 
the wives and children of some who were 
already here, and a few others of their 
Leyden friends. There were also not a few 
who had no previous connection with them, 
but by side influences and importunity at 
London, had pressed their way in — some of 
them so bad, that the colony were glad to 
pay their expenses back again next year. 
The colony were still living on hope. Most 



FAST AND THANKSGIVING. 233 

of them had become quite shabby in their 
clothing; and "the best dish they could 
present their friends was a lobster or a piece 
of fish, without bread or any thing else but 
a cup of fair spring water." 

The new comers were dismayed. " Some 
wished themselves in England again ; others 
fell a weeping, fancying their own misery in 
what they saw now in others. Only some 
of their old friends rejoiced to see them, and 
that it was no worse with them — for they 
could not expect it should be better — and 
they now hoped they should enjoy better 
days together." All, however, with a soli- 
tary exception came in health and found the 
whole colony, notwithstanding their wants, 
in perfect health. Elder Brewster is now 
joined by his daughters, Fear and Patience ; 
Samuel Fuller and several others by their 
wives; Robert Hickes and William Hilton 
by their whole families. The widow Alice 
Southworth came also, and in a fortnight 



234 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 

was joined in marriage to William Bradford, 
who in early life, it is said, had sought her 
hand. Barbara Standish, the second wife of 
the valiant captain, came in this company ; 
and Fear Brewster, who afterwards became 
the wife of Isaac AUerton. 

With them came a friendly letter from 
Mr. Cushman ; and another from a portion 
of the merchants — for they had some warm 
friends among the merchants — in which 
they apologize for not sending Mr. Robinson, 
and assure them that " the hearts of hun- 
dreds that never saw their faces are towards 
them " " who doubtless pray for your safety 
as their own." 

About this time Captain Standish returns 
from an excursion with a supply of pro- 
visions. The vessels have come in safety 
with their friends. The fields are pouring 
out a bountiful harvest. And " having these 
many signs of God's favor and acceptation 
we thought it would be great ingratitude if 



FAST AND THANKSGIVING. 235 

secretly we should smother up the same, or 
content ourselves with private thanksgiving 
for that which by private prayer could not 
be obtained. And therefore another solemn 
day was set apart and appointed for that 
end, wherein we returned glory, and honor, 
and praise with all thankfulness to our good 
God which dealt so graciously with us ; 
whose name, for these and all other mercies 
towards his church and chosen ones, by them 
be blessed and praised now and evermore. 
Amen." 

Where and how did they keep their 
Thanksgiving? Some eighty rods from the 
water's edge in Plymouth, there rises a hill 
one hundred and sixty-five feet high. On 
the south-east portion of its summit there 
are still discernible marks of an old building 
site. From this point the eye of the Pilgrim 
commanded the whole region round from 
which the hostile Indian might approach, 
and gazed far off over one of the loveliest 



23G THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 

sea views in the country. Down before him 
he saw the placid land-locked harbor, with 
tlie island where the boat's crew, on the day 
])efore their memorable landing, kept the 
lioly Sabbath under the shadow of a great 
rock; close beneath his feet the huddled 
cluster of rude log houses with their thatched 
roofs and oiled-paper windows ; and between 
tlie village and the harbor, the sacred spot 
where in the first twelve months he laid to 
rest the wearied frames of half his comrades, 
tlie lovely and the strong. On this high 
point of view there stood, after the first 
eighteen months and for many years, "a 
large square house with a flat roof, made of 
thick sawn planks, stayed with oak beams " — 
and six four-pound cannons looking grimly 
round upon the top. The room below be- 
came their meeting-house — not their church, 
for the church was the comi)aiiy of the 
saints — " where they preach on Sunday and 
the usual holidays. They assemble " (said an 



FAST AND THANKSGIVING. 237 

eye-witness in 1627) by beat of drum, each 
with his musket or firelock, in front of the 
captain's door ; they have their cloaks on, 
and place themselves in order three abreast, 
and are led by a sergeant without beat of 
drum. Behind comes the Governor in a 
long robe ; on the right hand comes the 
preacher with his cloak on, and on the left 
hand the captain with his side arms and 
cloak, and with a small cane in his hand ; — 
and so they march in good order, and each 
sets his arms down near him." After this 
manner, probably, they marched to their 
place of worship on that Thanksgiving day. 

Assembled thus with the matchlock by 
their sides, the cannon overhead, and God 
all around and within, these bearded men 
and care-worn, great-hearted women, wor- 
shiped God in no stinted measure. " Eight 
or nine hours " had been the time of the 
Fast day's services. And though there was 
not such agony of wrestling to prolong the 



238 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 

hours of Thankfulness, liberal portions of 
God's word no doubt were read, from the 
old Geneva version ; words of exhortation 
must have flowed profusely from the heart ; 
their prayers bore a large burden of grati- 
tude, and doubtless they sung no asthmatic 
songs of praise. The whole congregation 
sang ; nor for more than a hundred and 
fifty years did the descendants of the Pil- 
grims surrender the privilege of having " all 
the people praise God in song." They had 
no " lining " of the hymns. They sung no 
fuguing tunes. York, Wmdsor Martyrs, 
Old Hundred, and the like, they sung. 
Perhaps on that Thanksgiving day they sung 
from their own (Ainsworth's) "Book of 
Psalms" this very psalm: — 

Psalm C. 

1. Showt to Jehovah, all the earth, 

2. Serve ye Jehovah with gladness : 
before him come with singing mirth 

3. Know that Jehovah he God is ; 



FAST AND THANKSGIVING. 239 

Its he that made us, and not wee ; 
his folk, and sheep of his feeding. 

4. O with confession enter yee 

his gates, his courtyards with praising : 

confesse to him, blesse ye his name, 

5. Because Jehovah he good is : 
his mercy ever is the same : 
and his faith unto all ages. 



Of what took place at home tliat day we 
can only conjecture. The heartfelt acknowl- 
edgment must have gone up in many of 
those humble homes for perfect health, and 
perfect plenty, and the sight of old familiar 
faces, with a fervor greater than ever before. 
And as our fathers always carefully distin- 
guished even in outward form a thanksgiving 
from a fast, so Elder Brewster must have 
set at home in that old arm-chair of his that 
is still to be seen at Pilgrim Hall, and 
around his festal board were ranged his 
children, Patience, and Fear, and Love, and 



240 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 

Wrestling, and Jonathan, now brought again 
together. The good sword of Standish with 
its Arabic inscription, must have been super- 
seded by the huge kettle and the lordly 
dish of his that now lie peacefully by its side 
in Plymouth ; and the pewter platters that 
still bear the mark, "E. W."— Edward 
Winslow — must have done good service. 
No doubt those men eat their bread with joy 
and drank their beverage with a merry 
heart ; for God accepted their works. And 
the love of God and the spirit of overflowing 
gratitude crowned the feast. 

Such a sad and agonizing Fast, and such 
a jubilant Thanksgiving day, doubtless have 
never come and gone since the year sixteen 
hundred and twenty-three. 




Pilgrim Church. pp. 240. 



REST AT LAST. 241 



CHAPTER XIII. 

REST AT LAST. 

The crisis was past. Never again was the 
Plymouth colony reduced to such straits, 
nor its existence seriously jeoparded. The 
colonists labored under many disadvantages, 
but the Lord blessed them and they pros- 
pered. When the seven years were ended, 
they bought out the London merchants for 
1,800 pounds. Every foot of their lands, to 
the time of king Philip's war, was procured 
of the Indians by purchase. They expended 
many hundred pounds in bringing over the 
remainder of the Leyden company and pro- 
viding for them in New England. And at 
length, in the year 1630, the last of that 
band were brought in safety to their breth- 
ren in Plymouth. 

21 



242 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 

But before their emigration was com- 
pleted, other men had followed on their 
track. In 1629 and 1630 commenced those 
settlements at Salem, Boston, and the neigh- 
boring regions, that filled the State of Massa- 
chusetts with a wealthy and powerful body 
of colonists. The Plymouth settlers were 
few in number, and feeble in resources ; 
strong only in their brave hearts, their admi- 
rable spirit, their indomitable energy, and 
their firm faith in God. But it was their 
honorable privilege to have opened the way, 
and drawn all eyes after them. As early as 
1623, a portion of the merchants who sym- 
pathized with them, wrote to them thus: 
" Let it not be grievous unto you that you 
have been mstruments to break the ice for 
others who come after with less difficulty. 
The honor shall be yours to the world's end. 
We bear you always in our breasts, and our 
hearty affection is towards you all, as are 
the hearts of hundreds who never saw your 



REST AT LAST. 243 

faces^ who doubtless pray for your safety as 
their own, as we ourselves both do and ever 
shall, that the same God which hath so mar- 
velously preserved you from seas, foes, and 
famine, will still preserve you from all future 
dangers, and make you honorable among 
men and glorious in bliss at the last day." 
The settlers of Salem distinctly state that 
the tidings from the Plymouth men " occa- 
sioned other men to take knowledge of the 
place and to take it into consideration." 

When, therefore, the oppressions that king 
James laid upon the Puritans began to be 
aggravated by his misguided son, Charles I., 
and the fierce archbishop Laud, New Eng- 
land was the place of rest to which at once 
they turned their eyes. The Salem church 
was immediately drawn into friendly rela- 
tions to the Plymouth church; and when 
Skelton and Higginson were ordained as 
pastor and teacher at Salem, Governor Brad- 
ford gave the right hand of fellowship. 



244 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 

In their own church affairs the Plymouth 
church met with much opposition from a 
portion of the London merchants. Mr. 
Robinson had expected soon to follow his 
flock to America. Indeed he seems to have 
remained behind with much reluctance. 
Elder Brewster meanwhile was the preacher 
to the Plymouth church ; but from some 
scruples of his own and Mr. Robinson's, he 
never administered baptism nor the Load's 
Supper. But Robinson's coming, which was 
dependant on the merchants who furnished 
funds, was continually delayed. At length it 
appeared that a strong and influential faction 
of the merchants was resolutely bent on 
giving an Episcopalian ministry to the little 
church, or, at least, determined that such a 
man as the Ley den pastor should not join 
his flock. 

It will be remembered how on the de- 
parture of the Mayflower company, Mr. 
Robinson had spoken of his earnest desire 



REST AT LAST. 245 

" to have borne his part with them in their 
first brunt," and of himself as held back by 
" strong necessity," but having his '' better 
part with them." The next year he writes 
to them, " My most earnest desire is unto 
you ; from whom I will not longer keep, (if 
God will,) than means can be procured to 
bring me with the wives and children of 
divers of you, and the rest of your brethren, 
whom I could not leave behind me without 
great injury both to you and to them, and 
offence to God and all men. The death of 
so many of our dear friends and brethren, 
oh ! how grievous hath it been to you to 
bear, and to us to take knowledge of." 
Eighteen months later the merchants apolo- 
gize for the delay in sending " him on whom 
you most depend ; " and in the beginning of 
1624 they plainly inform the colonists that 
there is a strong faction among them firmly 
opposed to the coming of Mr. Robinson. 
That faction send over a preacher, one John 

21* 



246 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 

Lyford, who at first ingratiates himself with 
the church, but is soon found to be in corres- 
pondence with the enemies of Robinson in 
England, to prevent his coming, as well as 
writing bitter slanders of the colony. Fur- 
ther investigation proves him to be a man of 
immoral life, and he is rejected from the 
colony. 

About this time Mr. Robinson begins to 
be fully informed of the state of affairs, and 
in December, 1G23, he writes to Bradford 
that " our hopes of coming unto you are small, 
and weaker than ever." He has discovered, 
as he writes to Brewster at the same date, 
that " five or six of the adventurers are 
absolutely bent for us, above any others," 
that the great body of them are " honestly- 
minded and lovingly disposed towards us," 
but so connected with certain " forward 
preachers " as to be virtually controlled by 
them ; and that " five or six of them are our 
bitter professed adversaries," and unwilling 



REST AT LAST. 247 

" that I of all others should be transported. 
And for these adversaries, if they have but 
half the wit to their malice, they will stop 
my course when they see it intended, for 
which this delaying serveth them very oppor- 
tunely. And as one restive jade can hinder 
by hanging back, more than two or three 
can draw forward, so will it be in this case." 
The whole letter seems almost entirely hope- 
less in regard to his coming, and closes, 
" Your God and ours, and the God of all 
his, bring us together if it be his will, and 
keep us in the meanwhile and always to his 
glory, and make us serviceable to his majesty 
and faithful to the end. Amen." 

Robinson's prediction probably would have 
been happily disappointed and he would 
have been relieved from his " languishing 
state," as he terms it, but the time was then 
rapidly approaching for his journey to a 
better country, even an heavenly. All that 
is known of his peaceful end is contained in 



248 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 

a letter from one of his bereaved flock at 
Ley den. 

" Loving and kind friends," writes Eoger 
White to Governor Bradford and Elder 
Brewster, April 28, 1625, "I know not 
whether this will ever come to your hand, 
or miscarry as other my letters have done ; 
yet m regard of the Lord's dealings here, I 
have had a great desire to write unto you, 
knowing your desire to bear a part with us, 
both in our joys and sorrows, as we do with 
you. These are therefore to give you to 
understand that it hath pleased the Lord to 
take out of this vale of tears, your and our 
loving and faithful pastor, and my dear and 
Keverend brother, Mr. John Robinson, who 
was sick some eight days. He began to be 
sick on Saturday, in the morning, yet the 
next day (being Lord's day) he taught us 
twice. And so the week after he grew 
weaker, every day more than other ; yet he 
felt no pain but weakness all the time of 



RESTATLAST. , 249 

his sickness. The physic he took wrought 
kindly in man's judgment ; but he grew 
weaker every day, feeling little or no pain, 
and sensible to the very last. He fell sick 
the 22d of February, and departed this life 
the 1st of March. He had a continual in- 
ward ague, yet free from infection, so that 
all his friends came freely to him. And if 
either prayers, tears or means could have 
saved his life, he had not gone hence. But 
he having faithfully finished his course, and 
performed his work which the Lord had 
appointed him here to do, now resteth with 
the Lord in eternal happiness. We wanting 
him and all church government, yet still by 
the mercy of God continue and hold close 
together, in peace and quietness; and so 
hope we shall do, though we be very weak. 
Wishing (if such were the will of God) that 
you and we were again united together in 
one either there or here ; but seeing it is 
the will of the Lord thus to dispose of things, 



250 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 

we must labor with patience to rest con- 
tented till it pleases the Lord otherwise to 
dispose.'' 

" The Lord took him away," wrote 
Thomas Blossom, another of his church, 
" even as fruit falleth before it is ripe ; when 
neither length of days nor infirmity of body 
did seem to call for his end. . . . Alas, 
you would fain have had him with you, and 
he would as fain have come to you. Many 
letters and much speech hath been about his 
coming to you, but never any solid course 
propounded for his going ; if the course pro- 
pounded the last year had appeared to have 
been certain, lie would have gone though 
with two or three families. I know no man 
among us knew his mind better than I did 
about those things; he was loth to leave 
the churcli, yet I know also that he would 
have accepted the worst conditions which in 
the largest extent of a good conscience could 



REST AT LAST. 251 

be taken, to have come to you." But the 
Lord had a better thing in store for him. 

Twenty-seven days later died of the tertian 
ague, James of England, who had "harried" 
Robinson out of the land ; and about the 
same time Robert Cushman died in Eng- 
land, who, after the first panic at Southamp- 
ton, had been the firm and useful friend of 
the colony. 

It pleased God to spare William Brewster 
in good health to a very great age. He 
shared all the toils and sufferings of his 
brethren, in their days of darkness, with a 
cheerful spirit. And afterwards so long as 
he was able, he continued to " labor with his 
hands in the fields," and " when the church 
had no other minister, he taught twice on 
every Sabbath and that both powerfully and 
profitably." He lived to see other churches 
formed all around, in Duxbury, Scituate, 
Sandwich, Yarmouth, Barnstable, Marsh- 
field and Taunton, and to witness the occu- 



252 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 

pation of all the chief points in Massachusetts 
and Connecticut by a powerful body of 
settlers, who came direct from England, 
blessed with a learned and able ministry. 
Mather, and Cotton, and Hooker, and Dav- 
enport, and Eliot, and their noble brethren 
were here. More than fifty towns and 
villages were settled ; and the confederacy 
was forming between the four colonies of 
Plymouth, Massachusetts, New Haven and 
Connecticut. Brewster's son Jonathan, 
destined for the ministry, had graduated at 
Harvard University in 1642 ; and in the 
year after this great joy, the old man passed 
away to his rest. 

" I am about to begin this year," writes 
Governor Bradford in 1643, "with that 
which was a matter of great sadness and 
mourning unto them all. About the 18th 
of April died their Reverend Elder, and my 
dear and loving friend, Mr. William Brew- 
ster ; a man that had done and suffered 



REST AT LAST. 253 

much for the Lord Jesus and the gospel's 
sake, and had borne his part in weal and 
woe with this poor, persecuted church, above 
thirty-six years in England, Holland, and in 
this wilderness, and done the Lord and them 
faithful service in his place and calling. 
And notwithstanding the many troubles and 
sorrows he passed through, the Lord upheld 
him to a great age. He was near fourscore 
years of age (if not all out) when he died. 
He had this blessing added by the Lord to 
all the rest, to die in his bed, in peace, in 
the midst of his friends, who mourned and 
wept over him, and ministered what help 
and comfort they could unto him, and he 
again re-comforted them whilst he could. 
His sickness was not long, and to the last 
day thereof he did not wholly keep his bed. 
His speech continued till somewhat more 
than half a day, and then failed him ; and 
about nine or ten o'clock that evening he 
died, without any pangs at all. A few hours 

22 



254 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 

before, he drew his breath short, and some 
minutes before his last, he drew his breath 
long, as a man fallen into a sound sleep 
without any pangs or gaspings, and so 
sweetly departed this life unto a better.'' 

A large number of those who passed 
through the hardships of the first winter and 
sprhig lived to a good old age. God per- 
mitted them to witness the fruits of their 
self-denials and sufferings before he called 
them away. Thirty of them were spared for 
thirty years. Twelve of them were Hving 
sixty years after the landing; and one of 
them, Mary AUerton, the widow of Robert 
Cushman's son Thomas, was living seventy- 
eight years from that memorable time. 

Standish, Winslow, Allerton and Bradford 
lived till Cromwell was fairly seated on the 
throne of the Tudors and the Stuarts, and 
perfect religious toleration was established 
for a time in England. Then at a good old 
age they dropped away within four or five 



REST AT LAST. 255 

years of each other. In 1655 Edward 
Winslow died at sea, at the age of sixty 
years. He had been a most honored and 
useful member of the new Commonwealth, 
and a trusted agent in its affairs abroad. 
His estate in Marshfield became, in later 
years, the favorite country seat of Daniel 
Webster. The next year Standish "fell 
asleep in the Lord," at his home in Duxbury 
— a place that was named by him for his old 
ancestral home in England. He was more 
than seventy years of age. 

The ensuing year Bradford followed his 
ancient comrades. For thirty-one years he 
had been the honored Governor of the 
colony, — ^liaving been excused for five years 
only after the death of Carver, and that upon 
his own urgent request. For several months 
his health was infirm and failing, till in May, 
1657, he was seized with acute disease. The 
last night but one of his life, his mind was 
so enraptured by contemplations upon re- 



256 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 

ligious truth and the hopes of futurity, that 
he said to his friends in the morning, " The 
good Spirit of God has given me a pledge of 
my happiness in another world, and the first 
fruits of eternal glory." And he passed 
to his rest, greatly lamented throughout 
New England. 

Thirteen years longer lingered his widow, 
Alice Southworth Bradford. She had fled 
with her father to Holland, probably at the 
age of seventeen ; had shared all the joys 
and sorrows of the colony at Plymouth 
except those of the first eighteen months; 
and now passed to her rest at the ripe age 
of eighty years. Her life had been one of 
exemplary activity and great usefulness; 
and her memory left a long traditional 
fragrance in the colony. Inside the cover 
of the recently discovered manuscript of her 
husband's history, some affectionate hand, 
long since mouldered to dust, pasted a copy 
of rude verses on " the life and death of that 



REST AT LAST. 257 

godly matron, Mistress Alice Bradford," 
narrating her history, commemorating 

" Her holy, blessed, heavenly example," 

and lamenting the gradual dropping away 
of those elder saints : — 

"'Tis sad to see our houses dispossessed 
Of holy saints, whose memory is blest ; 
When they decease, and closed are in tomb. 
There's few or none that rises in their room, 
That's like to them in holiness and grace — 
Which makes our times look with so sad a face. 
Her glass is run, her work is done, and she 
Is happy unto all eternity." 

Thus one by one they disappeared from 
the earth. The last of the Mayflower pas- 
sengers lived till there were a hundred and 
thirty churches, and more than a hundred 
thousand inhabitants in New England ; till 
two editions of Eliot's Indian Bible had been 
printed, and thirty Indian churches had been 

22* 



258 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 

formed in Massachusetts, with about " three 
thousand praying Indians." 

In looking back on the history of that 
memorable band, the chief thing that im- 
presses us is their firm, cheerful faith in 
God. That was their light, and their 
strength. They had little else. They were 
few ; they were poor ; they had little influ- 
ence ; they were without friends ; they had 
no men of renown to lead them on. Never, 
since the days of the apostles, perhaps, did a 
feebler band lead off a greater enterprise. 
Never did an enterprise seem to human eyes 
more absolutely hedged with difficulties at 
every step. It is worth studying for the 
very purpose of seeing over what obstacles 
and through whatever impending defeat all 
those momentous movements were carried 
on. At each step the way seemed shut 
before them ; and the only light they had 
came from their calm assurance that God 



REST AT LAST. 259 

would take care of them so long as they 
walked the plain path of duty. Never were 
men more confiding in God, and never did 
men more fully own his hand in every daily 
mercy. *They " sought direction " from him 
before every decision. They returned thanks 
to him for every mercy. They believed in 
a daily providence that gave them daily 
bread, and saved their lives from the Indian 
arrows, and poured out the rain on their 
withering crops, and numbered the very 
hairs of their head. And they felt safe 
because they knew God was with them. 
" They rested on his Providence," say they, 
" and knew whom they believed." 

Look at their continual frustrations and 
discouragements. Twice baffled in the at- 
tempt to leave England, with much loss of 
property and distress. Forced again to 
sacrifice their worldly prospects for spiritual 
peace, by quitting Amsterdam. Oppressed 
with penury at Ley den, and worn out with 



260 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 

perpchial solicitudes. Met with dismal ap- 
prehensions on the first proposal to seek 
another home. Too poor to plant the colony 
they decide upon, and obliged to submit to 
the most forbidding terms. Frustrated in 
their efforts to obtain a pledge of toleration, 
and again obliged "herein to rest upon God's 
providence." Delayed by bickerings in the 
Plymouth company till the zeal of the mer- 
chants was cooled off. Left in such uncer- 
tainty that six weeks before they sailed, 
neither money nor vessels were pro^^ded for 
their transportation. Ill-equipped, at last. 
Incurring the anger of the chief merchant 
adventurer on the eve of their sailing. 
Wasting precious time and scanty provisions, 
in vexatious delays on the English coast, and 
obliged at last to part with the vessel they 
had bought for the use of their new home. 
Setting sail amid predictions of utter defeat 
from their chief agent in England, himself 
declining to share their fate. Failing to 



REST AT LAST. 261 

reach their destination, and landed in mid- 
winter on a bleak shore, with disaffection 
muttering among them, and a selfish crew 
anxious to get rid of them. Then came the 
forlorn task of founding a settlement amid 
the frosts of winter, and under continual 
apprehension of the savages. Then followed 
the heart-sickening calamity that laid low 
one-half their number. New settlers came 
to increase their numbers, but to diminish 
their supplies. Tidings occasionally came 
across the waters, of trouble and opposition 
in the London company. A reckless band 
exhausted their provisions and endangered 
their existence. Then came the famine. 

But amid all these things their faith never 
failed. When extinction seemed to come 
and look in their faces, they never lost con- 
fidence in God. They felt that they had 
forsaken God; and again they drew near to 
him with agonizing prayer. And then their 
sorrow was turned into great and exceeding 



262 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 

joy. The Lord heard them — and they said, 
let his holy " name be blessed and praised 
now and forevermore." It was a simple, 
confiding, daily faith, that saw God in every 
thing, that laid hold of his hand, and 
" walked with God." It was well expressed 
at Leyden when in reply to all the difficul- 
ties foreseen and admitted, they simply said, 
" Our ends are good and honorable, our 
calling lawful and urgent, and therefore we 
may expect the blessing of God in our pro- 
ceeding. Yea, though we should lose our 
lives in this action, yet we may have comfort 
in so doing ; and our endeavors will be 
honorable." 

Nothing but such a faith was adequate to 
such an enterprise. Any other spirit would 
have completely failed. Wlien the May- 
flower returned to England after the first 
winter's terrible mortality, no one proposed 
to return in her. Just one hundred and 
one years before saw the fleet of Cortez, by 



REST AT LAST. 263 

order of the commander, burned and sunk 
in the harbor of Vera Cruz, to shut himself 
and his army in Mexico. It has been re- 
corded as one of the most daring deeds in 
the history of the world. Yet though they 
were nigh seven hundred strong, able-bodied 
men, all armed to the teeth, it required all 
the address of their general to save him from 
the despairing vengeance of his soldiers. 
But here was a little band of fifty, including 
women and children, still weak from sick- 
ness, living in their mud-plastered log-huts, 
with their dead sleeping behind them all 
hidden in the bank, and the wilderness and 
the savages before them, quietly watching 
the breaking of the last bond that bound 
them to their native land. There must have 
been tearful eyes that followed those white 
sails disappearing in the distant blue. But 
there were stout hearts beneath, that turned 
resolutely and cheerfully to their lot. 



264 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 

The lesson is worth pondering both by the 
young and by the old, to see through what 
continual and seemingly insuperable obsta- 
cles, great and good things are accomplished, 
and how they that will do good in this world 
must often walk by faith, and not by sight. 
And the inner history of a great multitude 
of achievements for the cause of Christ 
would teach the same lesson. 

For, how wonderfully God was working 
with these humble men, and even by these 
adverse events, to accomplish a noble work. 
These men thought only of doing their duty 
in a very humble way. They had no grand 
schemes in mind. They never even dreamed, 
to the day of their death, what a work they 
had begun. They felt that they owed some- 
thing to their children, to themselves, and to 
their Master in heaven ; and they went 
quietly and trustfully about their Fatlier's 
business. They did not at the time under- 
stand the way in which God was leading 



REST AT LAST. 265 

them. The persecution that drove them 
from England, no doubt they felt to be an 
unmitigated hardship. The time spent in 
Holland may have seemed to them lost time. 
The difficulties that delayed their expedition, 
and the poverty that cramped it, were a sore 
trial to them. The delays in England, the 
loss of the Speedwell, the trouble with the 
merchants, they would gladly have been 
spared. The sickness and famine were a 
dark visitation. But God's hand was hi all 
these things. They would not have left 
England except as they were driven out. 
The residence in Holland was a necessary 
preparation for their further work; it 
enlarged their views, bound them together, 
inured them to hardships and made them 
willing to undertake the distant expedition. 
All the delays and difficulties that made the 
enterprise most forbidding, sifted their num- 
ber, and left the choice seed alone. The 
sorrows and trials of the first settlement not 

23 



266 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 

only kept them near to God, but shut them 
up from all intrusion, and left them to work 
out their experiment unmolested. And at 
every step of their winding way, when tlie 
path before appeared at its end, God always 
unfolded it as they went on. Hill after hill 
seemed to shut down across their track ; but 
whenever they reached the spot, the way 
went winding on among the hills. Some- 
times it was only at the last moment that * 
the obstruction was removed. Sometimes it 
was done in the common course of events ; 
at others, by such unexpected methods as 
powerfully to enforce their views of a special 
providence. 

And thus step by step, through perplexi- 
ties and trials, and difficulties and opposi- 
tion, God led them on and they humbly 
followed, till tlieir noble work was done. 
So shall it be with every high achievement. 
It is not done in dream-land, amid flowers 
and sunshine and luxury and applause ; but 



REST AT LAST. 267 

ill the hard prose scenes of daily life, with 
struggling and weariness, and self-denial, 
and many a discouragement. But toil and 
faith and patience, with the blessing of God, 
will make their mark. 

" Trust in the Lord and do good ; so shalt 
thou dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt 
be fed. Delight thyself also in the Lord; 
and he shall give thee the desires of thine 
heart. Commit thy way unto the Lord; 
trust also in him, and he shall bring it to 
pass." 



THE END^^^^x? 






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